By popular demand, here’s the result of using my flour imprinting model on a real human face, well, my own…

We’ll let the photos tell their own story, postponing the discussion for Comments (mainly), though as before, I might tack additions onto this posting later in the light of comments, further thoughts or both.

Yes, this site and its content, started some 4 years ago, should be seen as a work in progress. All findings are preliminary, all conclusions are tentative.

To business: here are the results from today’s experimentation, dare one say model building:

Here’s a piece of thick expanded polystyrene. A hole has been inexpertly cut out. The purpose is to allow me to imprint my own flour-coated face onto TAUT linen that goes under the chin, so as to stand a better chance of imprinting the nose, lips and chin. (The nose has previously been an obstacle to complete imprinting off a fully 3D human face, as distinct from ‘soft option’ bas relief).

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Here’s the wet linen spread out across the cut out region of polystyrene, ready to receive a flour-coated face. The linen will be gripped at the sides, closer to the bottom than the top, to ascertain whether nose AND lips AND chin can be simultaneously imprinted. (Yes, I pushed my face into the linen before taking this picture, as a dry, correction, wet run).

Here’s a late addition to the photo gallery, This afterthought was prompted by what seemed like a beard on the final imprint. Here it’s not at all difficult to see how imprinting onto the semi-transparent water-soaked linen, stretched taut like a drum skin (or maybe allowed a little slackness and sag to allow limited moulding to 3D relief)), should produce an entirely artefactual beard and possibly moustache too. Indeed, this prediction was made on this site many moons ago, suggesting there was a ” face pressed up against the glass” quality to the TS image that could have made the facial “hair” of the Man on the TS an imprinting artefact. Note too how the technique can generate trapped creases that subsequently get ‘baked in’ (see prominent one on TS at chin/neck level).

That’s me on the left, with face first smeared with olive oil, then dusted with plain white flour. Can you see the difference on the right? The flour is missing in places – most places in fact except the lower relief. Why? Because the picture was taken AFTER pressing my face down into the wet linen, stretched over the polystyrene cut out.

Here’s the oil/flour imprinted linen, suspended in a hot fan oven (up to 200 degrees C). Note the browning of the imprinted regions. Note that it’s not necessary to have the linen stretched out.

Here’s the initial ‘raw’ imprint of my face, prior to washing to achieve that fuzzier attenuated TS look. No, it does not look immediately promising, but bear in mind that the primary aim in this experiment was to achieve imaging of the lower half of the face (nose, lips and chin). The eyes are ‘white space’, no attempt having been made to image the (closed) eyelids. But then the eyes are poorly imaged on the TS too, as expected from a contact-imprinting model – the eyes being recessed in the bony eye sockets.

Here’s the same image, after tone reversal and 3D rendering/enhancement in ImageJ. Nope, not King Neptune, but yours truly. I seem to have acquired a beard. Why is that one may ask? What about the ‘beard’ on the TS? Is that a real beard, or is that too an artefact of contact-imprinting? Discuss….

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Late addition (29th Jan): the technique of smearing oil onto the template was first introduced on this site way back in October 2014 when exploring direct scorching from heated metal templates. As soon as the idea arrived that a cold template could be used to create a flour imprint on linen, heating the imprinted linen instead of the metal, then an agent was needed to help the flour adhere to the metal. That’s when oil put in its first appearance here, and has since been routinely used with an increasing number of template materials – terra cotta, plastics and now human skin -hands initially. (The oil only became necessary when the switch was made from imprinting with (a) wet flour slurry onto dry linen, to imprinting with (b) dry flour onto wet linen – that being a late stage of method development designed to achieve a fuzzier more TS-like image). But vegetable oil, even as virgin olive oil, is not the most user-friendly of substances to have to smear on one’s face, eyelids especially, as has currently needed to be done. Or does it? An agent introduced initially for use with metal is not necessarily needed for skin (while noting that oil was found to speed image development in the oven).

So a quickie comparison has been done of three pretreatments of skin (my fingers) before coating with dry flour and imprinting onto wet linen:

None (flour dusted onto skin directly with no binding agent)

Smeared with oil, then dusted with dry flour.

Smeared with a thin slurry of white flour in water, then dusted with dry flour.

Here’s a gallery of pix showing appearance at different stages. The captions describe the facts. Discussion of results and final choice of imprinting medium is in the Comments attached to this post.

3 (Left): precoating hands with flour paste then dry flour. 2 (Centre): precoating hands with olive oil then dry flour 1. (Right): dry flour only. (The numbering is in reverse, having been used for the reverse side of the linen, left to right, before imprinting) Top row: before imprinting onto wet linen Bottom row: depleted coatings after imprinting onto wet linen.

Top row: appearance of imprints immediately after removal from the oven, same numbering system as above. Bottom row: the same, showing final more TS-like attenuated images after thorough washing/grinding action with soap and water. Part of a bleached linen shirt was used in this experiment.

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Extract of comment, received yesterday (29 Jan) from Thibault Heimburger:

Looking again and again at the TS image of the face (positive and negative), the mystery remains. How is it possible for a medieval forger to produce BY CHANCE an imprint that after tone reversal gives a perfect (absolutely perfect) human face ?
It is NOT a question of aesthetic.
It is a question of subtlety of the imprint.

See my reply beneath it, to which I would add this image, one that needs no further comment or explanation:

“Perfect” face? Perfect by what criteria? Scientific or non-scientific?

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Update: 31st Jan 2016.

Here’s a screen grab from two of yesterday’s comments. the first my own, and the holding answer from Thibault Heimburger:

Comments, this site, 30 Jan 2016

I greatly look forward to hearing what Thibault Heimburger has to say regarding the density gradients in the TS image. It’s a topic that I explored a while ago, using the Thermal LUT mode of ImageJ to perform ‘easy’ visual analysis of TS facial density gradients, avoiding a welter of numbers:

Shroud Scope, nose, “moustache” cheeks etc analysed in Thermal LUT mode in ImageJ (part of the 3D -rendering menu, but note there was no raising of the z-scale above the default(0.1) setting. What one sees here is the basal “needle forest” of the digitized image with minimal 3D and zero smoothing.

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Update: Monday 1st Feb 2016: Am still fining-tuning the procedure for taking a minimally-distorted imprint off a REAL human face.

Simple experiments with a hood have confirmed the importance of pulling the linen taut UNDER the chin, so as to stretch it over the nose and lips, together with a little diagonal tugging down over both cheeks so as to prevent creasing. But the technique does not prevent creasing altogether. Does that matter where matching the TS image is concerned? I’ve chosen the Enrie negative to remind folk of the two prominent creases at TOP and BOTTOM of the head. Why is there so little discussion as to where they came from??? My model provides a simple answer.

Reminder: flour imprinting allows one to decide in advance which parts of the face will be in the final image, and which excluded, notably a preference for frontal over lateral planes so as to avoid image distortion. The underside of the chin can also be wiped, allowing one to pull the linen taut as described above without imprinting that area. In other words, the ‘mask’ like look of the TS, with those severe lateral cut-offs, are easily accounted for in the flour-imprinting model. Note too the sides of the nose have been wiped. But as I had to remind a commentator here, models are for using, not believing. Much still remains to be done to get something that matches the subtlety of the TS image (while recognizing that some of that may be due to centuries of ageing).

2nd update: Feb 1

Have just received this comment from Thibault Heimburger regarding the use of ImageJ’s Thermal LUT mode to visualize image density gradients.

Since this posting is already becoming too long, I’ll simply insert a graphic and caption here that responds to the first point raised (the use of the Min.% control bottom right). Further discussion can be found under Comments.

The top row shows the lower face of the Ts at 3 different levels of contrast/brightness/midtone value. One cannot expect of all them to respond equally well to the Thermal LUT mode of ImageJ, displayed above with the circle and the colour-coded cone. The first picture, lower row left, is what one sees with the Min.% set to zero. It works well on the high intensity image, showing a range of elevations, less well with the lower intensity levels (smaller range of colours). One can improve the response of the latter by increasing the Min.% level (shown at 33%) but that setting is too high for the dense image, giving excessive elevation and lopping off of the tops of cones. The Min.% control is a trial-and-error scaling device that one sets to get the maximum numberof colours in the Thermal LUT mode from blue through white and yellow to red. It expands the scale between a fixed maximum (100%) and a variable minimum value.

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New update: Tue 2nd Feb 2016

Re the second part of Thibault Heimburger’s question, I think I’m now in a position to explain the subtlety of the TS image (which I’ve always acknowledged) if as I now believe it is reasonably well modelled as a flour imprint – even if that is not the precise technology that was employed. The model merely serves as an example of how a seemingly mundane way of producing a contact imprint can give rise to “subtlety” which mirrors that of the TS image. But first it’s necessary to address the specifics, namely the intermediate levels of image density that are present in the TS image. In fact, one can see those in the standard images of the TS, viewed with the naked eye, whether as positive or negative images, whether as Enrie or Durante images. But the focus right now is on the tool offered by ImageJ to view image density mapped as colour coded artificial relief, as shown above with the simple example of a circle with increasing image density towards the centre being converted to a colourful conein the Thermal LUT mode (LUT= Look Up Table).

Yes, the same Thermal mode shows the expected gradation of image density in the TS, or as Thibault correctly observes, the highest relief (shown as red) having beneath it an intermediate relief colour (yellow). What was he expecting? The lowest relief immediately (blue) with no gradation? Why? Had that been the case the TS image would have looked like a rubber stamp imprint, a crude all-or-nothing imprint, showing a total absence of “subtlety”, read crudeness. But even my flour imprints (and before it the Mark 1 direct scorch imprints off a heated template) pass that test of “subtlety” in ImageJ’s Thermal LUT mode, as shall now be shown.

First, here are flour imprints off my own fingers shown earlier in this posting that will be used as indisputably an entirely man-made image:

See original caption above. Basically, images straight from oven in top row, the same after washing in bottom row.

Min. % = 13 (scale lower right)

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Min. % raised to 27.

Note then that the intermediate yellow zone beneath the red is NOT exclusive to the TS image. Put another way, if that yellow zone is a marker for “subtlety” then the flour-imprinting model could be said to pass the subtlety test with, er, flying colours (well, partially elevated ones anyway, if not totally airborne).

I shall shortly be adding two images that I hope will demonstrate the manner in which two entirely independent mechanisms of 3D image capture, mutually reinforcing, synergistic one might say, come into play that result in the semi-photographic like character of the final imprint. Time to get my camera out, and a bag of flour, and a sheet of linen…

If one set out to find a contact imprinting method that was most likely to capture 3D-ness, computer software-aided that is, it’s hard to imagine one that is better than the flour-onto-wet-linen method.

3D–ness is captured in the very first stage of sprinkling flour from above the recumbent subject, since the flour settles under gravity (read orthogonally in those radiation models) mainly but not exclusively on the flattest relief.

Left: flour sprinkled onto hand from above; Centre: excess shaken off; Right: flour attaches mainly but not exclusively to the flat relief, which tends to be the highest relief.

In a recumbent human subject (e.g. the Man on the TS) the flattest relief IS the highest relief!

Then there’s the moulding of wet linen to the body relief.

Wet linen pressed down onto hand. Note (left) the closer adhesion (additional transparency) to parts with hard underlying bone – about which more later. Note too (right) the somewhat bony skeletal look when fingers are held together such that the linen forms short bridges over the crevices between fingers, creating the impression of gaps in the final imprint that are not there, viz, the allegedly “X-ray” fingers of the Man on the TS in those radiation models (supposedly internal source of X-rays!).

Again, it’s the highest flattest relief that gets the most contact, the linen tending to make bridges between one prominence and another where there are intervening crevices and hollows. So one has a second entirely independent mechanism that favours the highest relief over the lower relief, such that a 2D imprint will have gradations of light and dark that give visual clues to the 3D relief of the parent template.

That’s the imprinting in general terms. One also has detailed aspects to consider where particular features of anatomy are concerned, like the nose, mouth, chin, the crossed hands, the feet. Let’s postpone further discussion on those for a day or two. Suffice it to say that flour imprinting can and does deliver the goods!

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Two more images, by request from Thibault Heimburger (see Comments, this posting, 4th Feb, re his need for highest definition pictures).

Flour imprint of fingers, before washing, 164KB, 72dpi

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After washing, 168KB, 72dpi

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Afterthought, added Friday 5th Feb

Have just remembered that one can use one’s printer scanner to obtain higher resolution pictures if desired (in this case it is Thibault Heimburger who has made the request which I’m only too happy to oblige). Fortunately I had not thrown away the linen with those flour imprints from my fingers. Here’s some images from the first scan, with the resolution set at its maximum (300dpi), approx 4 times greater than those above from the camera (and without camera shake!).

Approx 1MB file size, 300dpi. Oil-assisted imprinting on left, control (flour-only) on right. Both after vigorous washing in soap and water to dislodge encrusted material.

Slight enlargement then cropping of previous picture. Note that the weave is clearly visible in the scanned image, with no obvious pixellation, unlike standard photographs from the digital camera. These are ‘as is’ images: no adjustments have been made to contrast, brightness etc or other photoediting.

Final update: Thursday 11th Feb, 2016

OK, that’s it folks. I’ve now said all I want to say on the Turin Shroud. Have added this as my final comment.

This blogging investigator has been reporting his findings online for 4 years. Having chosen to use the internet as his medium of communication, he has quietly been monitoring the manner in which the major search engines allow his research to reach his target audience, namely those who input either “shroud of turin ” or “turin shroud”.

Google has largely delivered the expected performance, based on visits to my sites, links on other sites, whilst noting that is Google.uk.

Google.com (which US-based searchers will access) demotes my postings relative to Google.uk. That is tolerable, while hardly conducive to the sharing of international research and scholarship, But as soon as one looks at the alternatives to Google, naming no names. one disappears almost completely off the listings, at least the first 10 or 20 pages of returns.

What is the point of carefully composing my flagged-up Manifesto, work in progress, if the Internet and its search engines are likely to disregard it completely?

After much deliberation I have decided to keep thoughts and suspicions to myself as to why my postings fail to appear on`those (it has to be said) mainly US-based search engines, while those on other “Shroudie”, mainly pro-authenticity sites do. Nuff said.

OK. maybe I’m boring or too sciency. But how do the search engines and their algorithms know that? Or is there human intervention that we’re not told about, or commercial influences via advertising, feeding through to what appears on search returns?

Just some of the buildings comprising Google’s Mountain View HQ in California. How many employees? See next image.

Yes, Google employs well in excess of 50,000 full time employees. How likely is it that the search engine rankings are entirely algorithm -driven courtesy of electronic robots when one has this number of employees?

As indicated earlier. Google is not the worst offender where returns for (shroud of turin) are concerned. Indeed, it might be said to be the best offender. But try casting your eye, dear reader, down that list of returns, page by page. Notice anything? Notice that homogenized quality, indicative of selection/rejection- or at any rate promotion/demotion? Yes. those homogenized returns put this investigator in mind of those squat little jars of food he used to spoon-feed to his sons and daughter at weaning stage – smooth, bland, pureed – totally TOTALLY homogeneous and surprise free, and thus the total antithesis of the spirit of genuine scientific enquiry – always unsettling, always springing surprises.

Shame on you Stateside search engines for your PC, your control freakery, your attempts to stifle the agenda. You claim to be the guardians of a free society. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…..

My Manifesto now goes on the back burner indefinitely. It will not appear unless or until I detect some signs of objectivity and neutrality in the listings of the major internet search engines. That might take months, It might take years, But until it does, this hitherto internet-based research project is at an end.

Personal emails still welcome to sciencebod01 (at) aol.com, replace (at) with@, but this site is now closed. Thank you for your interest and contributions.

Note added May 24 2016

There are many more enigmas in this old world of ours than that scarcely visible image on a piece of linen, carbon dated to the 14th century. To quote just one example, there are those mysterious Neolithic and Bronze Age circles of standing stones, of which Stonehenge is probably the best known.

Care to see a view on those megaliths that you’ve maybe never encountered before (maybe because there are too many vested interests who don’t wish you to know something that – I have to say in all honesty – struck this blogger as immediately obvious, way back in 1998 when the 4000 year old “Seahenge” a rough-and-ready downmarket version of Stonehenge – was uncovered by storms on the East Anglia coast)?

100 Responses to Modelling the Shroud of Turin with white flour, olive oil and a real face – in pictures.

Oops. I said in the previous posting that LOTTO was the way to go. But here we are using LUWU. albeit a revamped version using taut stretched linen across a polystyrene frame, proxy for a medieval equivalent, with the wet linen manually clamped, instead of a soft highly deformable underlay (like a modern day pillow or cushion).

But please note the details, all those looking to debunk the “King Neptune” 3D-enhanced result. The linen was being held taut in the lower half only, an attempt to get best imprinting of nose, lips and chin, That goal seems largely achieved , at least in principle. The next goal is to to get even imprinting all over, not just the lower half, but top and bottom, the entire face.

Maybe the idea of a rigid frame that stretches the linen taut, at least initially, to get imaging off a real face, all features imprinted equally, is a credible alternative to the (cop-out) option of a flattened bas relief.

I look at your experiments with great interest.
But I do not understand the aim of this first experiment.
You wrote: ” Am now fairly confident that a contact image of the face would have been obtained using LOTTO (face up), not LUWU (face down) presentation to wet linen. ”
I agree.
However, your experiment does not follow the LOTTO model. I am wrong ?
I’m sure that, using the LOTTO model (face up) on your own face (with the help of somebody else), the discussion could be much more interesting.

I have just seen your comment above.
And I read: “The next goal is to to get even imprinting all over, not just the lower half, but top and bottom, the entire face.”
Yes but with the LOTTO model “à la Garlaschelli”. No ?

It seems I anticipated your comment by a few minutes Thibault, or TH as I prefer to call you, for reasons that need not concern us now. I have acknowledged in the posting that the new variation , using a frame to keep the linen taut, and pressing the head down into the linen, is LUWU rather than LOTTO. But the frame with outstretched wet linen could just as easily have been held above the face or bas relief template, and then lowered onto the head, so the old terminology of LUWU v LOTTO becomes somewhat irrelevant.

The important thing when imprinting off a real person’s face is ensure that the nose does not distort the rest of the image. Present findings suggest it takes relatively little tautness in the linen and applied pressure (manual) to prevent the nose from making a grotesque distortion of the entire result, Much remains to be done to confirm these preliminary findings.

Here’s today’s programme – nothing to set the world on fire, merely attending to the housekeeping details that need to be addressed before one can proceed with confidence.

Compare:

1. LOTTO standard
2. LUWU standard
3. New method with polystyrene frame
4. Use palm(s) of hand(s) to press linen forcibly across and down onto the three features, with or without a rocking movement.
5. Use two hands to grip linen left and right, then stretch with maximum force across and down onto the three features.

The key issue being addressed is whether deformation of the nose under pressure allows one to achieve simultaneous imaging of the three features. If the deformed nose looks odd or unsightly, then, before imprinting, wipe flour/oil from all but the highest part of the nose, making it impossible for subsequent squashing to leave a tell-tale imprint, except for a little non-linearity.

Subsidiary question: am I right in thinking that the “beard” is nothing more than a prominent imaging of the visible part of chin, ie. does not depend on imprinting of the underside of the chin? The above experiments will test that point.

>The Man in the Iron Mask (French: L’Homme au Masque de Fer)
is a name given to a prisoner arrested as Eustache Dauger in
1669 or 1670, and held in a number of jails, including the Bastille
and the Fortress of Pignerol (today Pinerolo). He was held in
the custody of the same jailer, Bénigne Dauvergne de Saint-Mars,
for a period of 34 years. He died on 19 November 1703 under
the name of Marchioly, during the reign of Louis XIV of France
(1643–1715).
>The possible identity of this man has been thoroughly
discussed and has been the subject of many books,
because no one ever saw his face, which was hidden
by a mask of black velvet cloth.

Voltaire claimed (in the second edition of his
“Questions sur l’Encyclopédie”, published in 1771)
that the prisoner was a son of Anne of Austria
and Cardinal Mazarin…
I wonder if, by chance, with that emblematic story and that evocative name,
perhaps the beginning of the cultural climate of the Enlightenment
wanted to allude to something inherent to the Shroud…
But this is only a vaguest cultural sensation linkable to
the relations between Enlightment and History of the Shroud,
and nothing more!
— — —
I think … in order to better understand something
about the role of the beard and mustache (= in the
genesis of a part of the imprint) one must have them
and use them to be able to make the imprint on the cloth …
In this sense I could be an useful candidate.
In any case I think it’s not too difficult to apply
beard and mustache on own face and then,
at the end, observe what is the different result obtained.
— —
You probably should use two frameworks in order
to better manage the construction of the face like the shroud.
How to do?
How to turn in a very useful gimmick, that double framework-contraption?
What is the best geometric trick?
————–
Will be new fate of research a “comfortable imprisonment”
of the researcher into the polystyrene frames?
Will be the head of Colin entangled in a double framework?
…and then:
…Colin will be only a “masked prisoner”?
Sorry, until now, I have not yet found a
valid (and safe) suggestion about this “new equipment”…
— —
Have you read the news about the last Exhibition in Turin
(= “Burden of proof. The construction of Visual Evidence
from the Holy Shroud to Satellite Images”)?
That exposition analyses the history of forensic photography
and displays a collection of pieces spanning over one
hundred years of history: from the first photos appearing
in courts of law to the satellite photos used by human rights
organisations to report the killing of civilians, like after drone attacks…

How to well control the “progressive collapse assessment of a linen cloth”?
This, apparently, seems difficult to do in practice (when you are in a hurry)…
Then, in order to futher simplify the suggested “complex experiment”, here few ingenouos lines, written from my own hands:
you can choose to press the “key area” of your face (and then, here, you can guess something about the usefulness [or not] of a second wooden framework) against a sand bag (to try to evidence the eyes and improve the other details) in order to see what happens.
But… Anyone can work with words!

Have just added this photo to the posting, taken by my wife, viewing the facial imprinting step with polystyrene frame from the other side:

It’s not difficult to see why the end result should create the mental/visual impression of a beard and even moustache that aren’t there. Indeed, the “x-ray’ teeth of August Accetta and others may also be explained by use of a taut sheet of linen that exerts a high degree of pressure on the facial contours.

First of all I beg your pardon about my previous idea:
>to press the “key area” of your face against a sand bag

because this operation (if you’ll use a porous sand bag)
can be unsafe for your eyes!
Then you can use a plastic material for the bag.
It can be: polyethylene or nylon, etc.
Excuse me, but I’m embarrassed to write what look
like the words said from the mother-in-law.
— — —
Here what can be another “paranoid idea”:
Was the Shroud the ending result from the machinations
of powerful people?
Can be this particular idea the leit-motiv
hidden under your research?
Am I too wrong in my guessing?

And then, here, the possible “applicative problem”
deriving from the hasty reading of that new article:

If:
“Conspiratorial ideation is the tendency of individuals
to believe that events and power relations are secretly
manipulated by certain clandestine groups and organisations.
Many of these ostensibly explanatory conjectures are
non-falsifiable, lacking in evidence or demonstrably false,
yet public acceptance remains high. …”
Then:
What is the probability that the Shroud was generated from a plot?
I think the answer can be found meditating the following words
(= another excerpt taken from the study by Grimes):
>Belief in one conspiracy theory is often correlated
with belief in others, and some stripe of conspiratorial belief
is ubiquitous across diverse social and racial groups…
— —
I think that if I would want to be the ”Application analyst”
of the “Iron Mask Society” I should be fired on the spot …
But “An application analyst is someone whose job is
to support a given application or applications” and
this seems to be very far from myself.

So…
Have you an idea about the birth of other
conspiracy theories about this new revival of
the mysterious Colin-“Iron Mask”?
Here an important point that should be
resolved immediately:
What should be the distance between the first
and second frameworks in order to be credible
(ie respect what we can see in the cloth of the Shroud)?
Sorry.
No new exact idea about an useful working
arrangement for “the first and second wooden frameworks”.
I think I have to wait with more patience
avoiding “curious parallel discourses”
(= On the Viability of Conspiratorial Beliefs. by Grimes, etc.) …

Yes, speaking of eyes, I’m finding I’m getting too much flour in my eyes with this current round of whole-face imaging. That’s because I’ve opted to do everything myself. That means having to open one’s eyes periodically while coating the face with flour, simply to check that flour has been applied evenly. One’s eyes also have to be open to record each stage with a camera. Result – eyes that itch for hours on end…

Solution? Call in a helper? Not really – others have their lives to lead and don’t necessarily want to be hanging around while I check this or that detail. Give up on the technology? Simply stick to the science? That’s a justifiable option, given I’ve said several times that reproducing the TS image was not my primary goal (it being to check the claim that its unusual characteristics – negative tone-reversed image, 3D properties, superficiality, half-tone and other microscopic properties etc- meant it could and never would be replicated). However, I would like to have one more fairly convincing image to add to the ‘King Neptune’ selfie obtained two days ago for inclusion in my forthcoming “Shroud Manifesto’ that was flagged up as being in an advanced state of preparation.

A compromise solution has been reached. For the next few days I shall revert to using wet flour slurry as imprinting medium instead of dry flour/oil. It will allow me to quickly compare the different ways of making contact between face and linen so as to get maximum imaging/minimal distortion. Once a good ‘geometry’ and optimal presentation has been discovered, I can then revert to dry flour just once more, so as to get the right degree of image fuzziness that is the hallmark of the TS image (though how much of that is the result of ageing is anyone’s guess). Yes, I will post any good imprints I obtain with wet flour slurry, notwithstanding that it’s not optimized technology. As I say, this site is less to do with technology, more to do with the imaging science. Expect too some references in respect of the Thermal LUT mode of ImageJ for probing 3D properties, whether real or as I believe, entirely artefactual. In other words, the TS image response in ImageJ will be compared alongside the latest model images with that highly discriminating probe of apparent image elevation on the vertical z axis. The nose, mouth and chin are the feature that are of most interest right now, for reasons that will be set out in due course, while briefly summarized as having the greatest information content.

You wrote:
“…The nose, mouth and chin are the feature that are of most interest right now…”

Yes.
The nose, mouth and chin are interesting features,
but the truth is more important than anything!
Until now I’ve seen no convincing evidence
from your experiments.
And then, here’s what my curiosity leads me to ask:
Do you have an idea of what can happen if, instead of flour,
you try to use flaxseed (= flaxseed flour)?

Here an information for the readers:
Lignans are polyphenols found in plants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lignan
— —
You (as being a retired scientist…)
for sure knows that :
Lignan precursors that have been identified in
the human diet include pinoresinol, lariciresinol,
secoisolariciresinol, matairesinol, and others …
Source:http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/dietary-factors/phytochemicals/lignans#introduction
— — —
B.T.W.: Health and flaxseeds.
Here two examples:
>Flaxseeds are an excellent plant source of
omega-3 fatty acids and are a wonderful alternative
source of omega-3 for anyone who doesn’t eat fish
or take fish oil supplements. Ground flaxseeds
provide fiber that can reduce cholesterol levels
and help stabilize blood sugar levels in diabetics.
The magnesium in flaxseeds can lower high blood
pressure and help treat insomnia. …

>Flaxseed as the number one source of Omega-3 fatty acids,
Lignans along with mucilage gums, offers amazing health benefits…
Flaxseeds can be consumed either in their raw or roasted form…
— — —
Is your idea in the field of “conspiracies theories”?
I ask because, if the idea falls in this field
I think we can apply the result coming from the
recent study by David Robert Grimes (already
mentioned yesterday)…
This Oxford University physicist worked out a
mathematical way to calculate the chances of
a plot being deliberately leaked by a whistle-blower
or accidentally uncovered.
He was able to show that the more people share
in a conspiracy, the shorter its lifespan is likely to be.
So…
IMHO this is very interesting and then I think we can
guess something regarding a very interesting
historic field range : 1204-1351…
— — —
Unfortunately Grimes indicated Gompertz,
but I have not a big skill in Maths…

PS: writing the above comment has just given me an idea for a new liquid vehicle for dry white flour to add to the vegetable oil, egg yolk, egg white etc that have been tested thus far. It’s absurdly simple. Why didn’t I think of it before? It’s flour/water slurry, used like paste. Yes. one would paint one’s face etc with flour paste, sprinkle on the dry flour, going around the painted area with a damp cloth, taking off the mix where one wants no imprinting (sides of face, sides of nose etc). One then imprints, hoping that the overlay of dry flour will be sufficient to give the desired fuzziness, while the underlying paste will have done its job in giving a good base to which the flour sticks, but not too strongly so as to prevent its transfer to linen. How nice it would be (and far less messy) if the whole thing can be done simply with flour and water.

(a) the negative image (contact imprinting always gives the reverse of a photograph in terms of light v dark)
(b) 3D properties (demonstrated using ImageJ, if only an artefact of the mischievous software that reads image density as height on an imaginary z scale)
(c) half-tone effect and maybe other microscopic properties, as revealed by light microscopy.
(d) faint image (the primary image from the oven can be attenuated by washing with soap and water)
(e) image fuzziness – the result of imprinting with a fine powder (white flour)
(f) tan-coloured image (as expected of high MWt Maillard reaction products.
(g) image superficiality? Has anyone ever properly established the degree of image superficiality of the TS, with positive evidence, precise numerical measurements? If so, please advise, preferably with a link.

I say the flour-imprinting model accounts for numerous aspects of the TS image, some allegedly ‘enigmatic’ like the much over-hyped 3D properties. If piero here and other convinced pro-authenticists wish to ignore the data I’ve accumulated over 4 years, then so be it. I’m only here for the science…

In my opinion, speaking with frankness,
your new “shroud-technology” has not yet reached
the level of true questionability (but I have
to beg your pardon about my several boring
driftings against the main argument!).

Among other things I see that I am almost
alone in continuing to discuss.
Perhaps Thibault is too busy…

IMHO You have to refine (at least) your images.
Sorry.
In my idea we cannot yet believe in a such set of rough proofs.

For example:
I have indicated the use of two wooden frameworks
in order to improve the resolution (in order to see,
at least, the image of the eyes…) in your particular
attempts of “Shroud-Maker-Faker”.

So…
What are you doing?
I am curious to see further results obtained
with frameworks.

Another little thing:
Is the idea of a “sand bag” (with a protective thin
foil of nylon) completely useless?
I am waiting…

BTW: I think you can built by yourself an
useful (refined) protective eye mask.
— — —
In short, unfortunately, I do not think that
now we can already argue with an appropriate
level of seriousness on the seven points listed by you.

However I am expecting your poster as an inventor,
a document that will be perhaps a bit crazy … like all innovations!
I also have serious doubts about the other part of
the image: the one formed by the imprint of the blood…
In other words:
Can you already show us an interesting “preview”
for two imprints merged into one?

I understand that I am a bit unnerving with
some of my objections, but I think you will be
able to extract a benefit for your possible
further innovative operations.

Is that the best you can do in response to a solid and substantial listing of points, piero – to suggest I still have some way to go in matching precise image characteristics (which indeed I do, if I were so inclined)?

You are doing what all the pro-authenticists do. You start by claiming that science cannot explain the TS image characteristics. When science shows it can, you progressively raise the bar, setting up new targets that have to be duplicated. When science shows they too are attainable, at least in principle, what do you do? You switch from scientific to aesthetic targets, making out that scientists have to develop skills as adept forgers.

Sorry, but I’m not prepared to play your game, operating by your ever-changing rules. State what you consider to be the scientific criteria that have to be met. Stay concrete, kindly avoid the abstract.

I think you’re near throwing your new offer
on the stock market…
But you should be more honest respecting
those who want to buy your actions.
Am I wrong?
— — —
You wrote:
“…You start by claiming that science cannot explain
the TS image characteristics. …”.
Sorry.
This seems to be the beginning of an obscure attack.
Where is the exact reference about my presumed statement?
This was never my claim… If I am right toward myself and
my thoughts.
Instead I claimed the use of AFM techniques as the feasible
solution to investigate in a deep manner the enigma, but
I never said that science cannot try to explain the variations
of color that are present on TS (=Turin Shroud) linen fibrils.
— — —
You have the possibility to develop your skills as
an inventor and you can do anything you want, but
you can not expect me to follow you in what seems
to me to go out enough track …
because, with your interesting set of experiments, in my opinion,
you are falling more in the realm of psychological tests
(inherent the field of Shroud studies) that doing hard Science.
— — —
Now, in concrete, I suggest to you an useful re-reading
of the article:
“The relationship of the Shroud with the Images
of Jesus in the Byzantine frescoes of Cappadocia”,
by Lennox Manton,
published in BSTS Newsletter No. 63 – June 2006

Here my question:
Are your new images able to fit the Vignon’s marks of
Pantocrator present in Karanlik Church and on TS?
I think the answer will be:
Not.
So… the rough verdict will be the following:
you are in the realm of fairy tales and not in that of science
(Is it possible to consider the Vignon’s marks
only as “aesthetic targets”?).
Then…
I can not put myself fantasizing about what seems
to have more similarity with the Rorschach inkblots…
Link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_test

And …a warning about olive oil: you have to show us
that an use of olive oil don’t hinders the bloodstains
(= no smearing at the end).
In my opinion you are still far from a proper
demonstration about this problem.
Good luck Colin… Improve your attempts!

Unlike you, I have a working model – flour imprinting. What’s more, it was arrived at by two entirely different approaches – the first by looking for agents that would sensitize linen to direct scorching off a heated template, the second by pursuing Joseph Accetta’s ideas re woodblock imprinting, looking at dyes, mordants, acids, protein and carbohydrate functional groups and finally Maillard reaction products. As I say, both led to flour and thermally-induced Maillard reactions. It is the flour imprinting method that is currently being evaluated right now in detail. Results are mixed – some promising, some still failing to give the expected match between theory and practice. My problem right now is finding enough time, energy and linen to perform all the tests and comparisons that are needed to evaluate the model.

Your problem, especially as regards your oft-repeated confidence that AFM will provide answers, is to convince me, and probably others too, that you have a useful model, capable of generating useful data, to say nothing of one that can be turned into a working model. As I told you once before, you are putting all your eggs in the one non-piloted AFM basket, and so far have nothing concrete to show for all your constant references to a methodology that is little more than empty sloganizing.

Get real, piero. Science is about feet on the ground, not head in the clouds.

Two vehicles/flour binders – the existing one (olive oil) and a new one (thin flour/water slurry) were compared against control (no vehicle)
One can judge the results of the trial (see photographs added to end of main posting ) on 4 different criteria:

1. The amount of flour that attaches initially to the skin
2. The amount and/or, less importantly, the proportion, that transfers to the linen (judged by how much is still left on the skin)
3. The general look of the imprint when removed from the oven (image density, homogeneity, resemblance to template etc).
4. The general look of the final attenuated, arguably more TS-like imprint after washing with soap and water.

Scoring of results (somewhat subjective):

Criterion 1: flour slurry>olive oil> control
Criterion 2: olive oil>control>flour slurry
Criterion 3: olive oil >flour slurry>control
Criterion 4: flour slurry>control> olive oil (highly subjective, given they are all rather similar, though there is scarcely any fine detail of finger joints in olive oil than the other two).

Summary: flour slurry and olive oil come out joint equal at 9, with control the runner up at 6.

If the fresh-from-oven appearance were the chief criterion, then the flour slurry would be penalized, having a thick and unattractive encrustation, relative to the more attractive even granular look of the olive oil. But there’s little to choose between the final attenuated imprints (where even the control looks quite acceptable).

However, based on experimenter-friendliness, the flour slurry wins. Why? Because there’s the immediate favourable impression created by strong attachment of lots of flour to the skin (though substantial amounts of slurry/flour fail to transfer, which may or may not be a bad thing). Then there’s the undeniable fact that if one’s decided to use a binder, it’s marginally better to coat oneself with flour slurry than with olive oil, at least if one washes the slurry off before it has had time to set like a rock-hard pasta shell.

So flour slurry it is, at least for the remaining tests on whole-face imprinting (which will be limited, given the heavy inroads it makes on limited supplies of hard or expensive to obtain 100% linen). The wider scientific pros and cons of introducing an external source of oil to supplement the natural oil of linen (reckoned to be about 1.5% by weight), given this investigator’s earlier admittedly speculative ideas about a possible role for oil in the half tone effect and other microscopic properties, can wait for another day. It’s the ability to imprint off full 3D relief, relative to, say, a bas relief, that is the prime concern of the present tests, not the microscopic characteristics of the final image.

“(a) the negative image (contact imprinting always gives the reverse of a photograph in terms of light v dark)”
That’s true.
But it’s not enough. Looking again and again at the TS image of the face (positive and negative), the mystery remains. How is it possible for a medieval forger to produce BY CHANCE an imprint that after tone reversal gives a perfect (absolutely perfect) human face ?
It is NOT a question of aesthetic.
It is a question of subtlety of the imprint.

” (g) image superficiality? Has anyone ever properly established the degree of image superficiality of the TS, with positive evidence, precise numerical measurements? If so, please advise, preferably with a link.”
The superficiality of the image has been shown. You know that.
Rogers and other members of STURP found that even in the darkest areas of the TS image (the nose) the color is confined in the 2-3 first layers of the fibers of the thread.
This is a positive evidence.I do not understand, in this context, what you mean with “precise numerical measurements” ? Numerical evidence of what?

How can you say the tone-reversed image is “perfect”, Thibault, given that the nose and one cheek are described as being distorted and/or swollen? Sure, one can cite scripture and say that’s consistent with a pre-crucifixion beating, but that’s not proof. One is simply maintaining a narrative. but lacking an essential reference if one’s to be certain whose narrative – 1st or 14th century – is correct. The missing reference? The image of the Man on the TS as he looked in life, or how he would have looked without the facial injuries.

Sorry, but one cannot deploy the adjective “perfect” and in the same breath describe the features as having suffered injury. Who’s to say the image was not taken by imprinting from a 14th century man, and that the “injuries” are in fact due to deformation of the facial features by a contact-imaging process? One man’s perfection is another’s imperfection.

Superficiality? It was not superficiality at thread level that I had in mind. It’s easy to demonstrate that kind of superficiality experimentally by visibly scorching one side of a single thread, as I have done, then ‘unspinning’ to find that most fibres are unscorched.

No, it was superficiality at the fibre level I had in mind, notably the claim that the image resides on the top 200nm only (or in some versions 200-600nm). . Where’s the positive evidence for that, more specifically precise numerical data, as distinct from Rogers’ ‘”guesstimate”? The latter you will recall was less than impressive, being based on an inability to discern the image layer in cross-section under a light microscope, then proceeding to assign a maximum wavelength shorter than the smallest wavelengths in the visible spectrum. Do you consider that constitutes hard data? I don’t.

I consider the degree of superficiality of the visible TS image to be unknown, and even if we knew it, that would not preclude changes to the core of the fibres that might explain their reported mechanical weakness without change in colour. What’s needed is a new STURP investigation, one that permits work on entire threads deploying more advanced physical techniques, as distinct from mere sticky-tape samples. Maybe it could be scheduled at the same time as a much needed rerun of the radiocarbon dating.

I wrote: “How is it possible for a medieval forger to produce BY CHANCE an imprint that after tone reversal gives a perfect (absolutely perfect) human face ? ….It is a question of subtlety of the imprint.”
Then why did you answer: ” Sorry, but one cannot deploy the adjective “perfect” and in the same breath describe the features as having suffered injury”?

Using the word “perfect”, I mean what follows:
The (negative) TS face shows a density gradient so subtle that you can immediately recognize a human face as if you were in front of the photograph of a human being.
In other words, the density gradient between, say, the nose and the cheeks is “perfect”. If you increase the density of the nose, even slightly, the abnormality is obvious.
There is no abnormality of this kind in the TS face (except perhaps the mustache).

What does it mean in the context of the hypothesis of the work of a medieval forger ?
It means, in my opinion, that he was able to PERFECTLY transfer the information between the template (bas-relief or real human face) and the linen.

Sorry, but your term “perfectly” is meaningless. It’s entirely subjective, and in scientific terms is frankly ‘begging the question’. It attempts to preempt the science by raising the bar to an impossible height. How does one measure ‘perfection’. One can’t.

No, it is not at all “entirely subjective”.
It is a question of density gradient that can be easily measured using your model and compared with that of the TS image.
“An impossible bar” ? It is the challenge of the TS.

I look forward to hearing what you have to say regarding density gradients.This image and a link to Thermal LUT analysis of image density in ImageJ have just been added to the end of the current posting:

You wrote:
>”…Your problem, especially as regards your oft-repeated confidence that AFM will provide answers, is to convince me, and probably others too, that you have a useful model, capable of generating useful data, to say nothing of one that can be turned into a working model. …”
Not.
No. Try to be honest!
In this way you badly discuss what I have stated and
then this is only your strange deformation of my thought.
I think you’ve already emitted your verdict of condemn about my proposal
(already near what I indicated in the year 1998!) in this bad way, which seems
to me very wrong.
So you should finally understand that
I do not have the “pre-established models” (to propose)
and I trust only what the checks (AFM, ATR-FTIR, Raman, etc.)
carried out on the material can easily detect!
See also what Galileo was able to do centuries ago…
I follow you because I am curious about your strange ideas and your experiments,
but (certainly) I can not believe you when you claim to indicate something that for now is much lower to the various attempts made, some of which offers are visible at the Museum of the Shroud of Turin ….

It was written by an economist (Henry Theil) but applies equally well to science.

You, piero, have demonstrated again and again that you have not the faintest clue as to the role of models, and modelling, in scientific research. Repeat: Models are to be used, not believed.”

The flour imprinting model is currently being used. I am not asking anyone to believe it, merely to evaluate the observations that it has generated, and decide for themselves whether they do or do not throw light on the likely provenance of the TS in a medieval context, consistent with the radiocarbon dating.

First of all,
I think I can try to answer remembering that:
>In science, no model is accepted until it is tested
against the real world.
>Scientists use models to make predictions and
then carry out critical tests to check whether
those predictions were accurate.

So, using the AFM techniques, etc.,
I would like to be able to test all of the various
models (included your attempts) proposed for
the formation of the Image on the Shroud (BIF),
in order to compare them and then try to classify
their inherent probability of matching the specific
features of the original material coming from the
Shroud (…that should be submitted to the same
analytical exams: “nondestructive tests”).

See also : “Hallmarks of Science”.
Link:http://scienceornot.net/hallmarks-of-science/
— — —
Exactly what should be tested and what
the results should be depends on the characteristics
of the particular model.
Each model should specify what physical
circumstances are required and predict
what data should be found as a result.
— — —
Here what can be indicated as a particular example:
Now, with respect to matters relating to the study
of fungal attacks, I’ve just found a possible vague reference …

>…Most of fungal cellulases have two modules
namely a catalytic domain (CD) module and a
carbohydrate-binding module (CBM). …
>…Atomic force microscopy (AFM) has the unique
ability to quantify interactions between two surfaces
at the molecular level and in native environments.
>We utilized AFM to measure the total forces acting
between CBM and reference substrates in buffered medium.
>By performing adhesion force measurements between
CBM and substrate surfaces, the binding affinity of
CBM to lignin and cellulose was quantified. …

Although the textile material of the Shroud
has been well preserved, it can still be useful
to improve our knowledge about the study of fungal attacks …
— — —
An economist (Henry Theil), the Econometrics and the Statistics…

I have read that:
>…The basic tool for econometrics is the linear regression model.
In modern econometrics, other statistical tools are frequently
used, but linear regression is still the most frequently used
starting point for an analysis. …
>…Econometric theory uses statistical theory to evaluate
and develop econometric methods.
>Econometricians try to find estimators that have
desirable statistical properties including
unbiasedness, efficiency, and consistency. …

So…
Where are the exact tables about the
desirable statistical properties, in our own field?
— — —
For example:
In the recent past I have read something about
a table, the “Evaluation of Image Formation Hypotheses”
and then there were:
Contact, Gas, Painting (McCrone), Artist (Craig) ,
Artist (Garlaschelli), Photo, Radiation (Jackson), Corona Discharge (Fanti)…
Well …
I think you have to fulfill all the request about
the “Image Characteristics”… with zero number
of items that are inconsistent! …
Are you ready to compile the complete table?
I wait…

AFM is able to generate high resolution 3D images
with negligible sample preparation, avoiding fixation,
dehydration or metal coating, as the electron microscopy methods do.
But I think I went a bit out of the way (here, in this blog)
with the interesting story concerning the question of
the degradation caused by fungal attacks.
So…
I have no will to waste other precious time with
that particular argument that should deserve
some more deep efforts, ie: regarding
the carbohydrate-binding module (CBM),
the catalytic domain (CD) module, etc.
— —
Sorry…
I asked you to compile a table about
the “Evaluation of Image Formation Hypotheses”
with respect your attempts.
Is that “homework” too difficult?
— — —
Today I have read an article about the ancient Mahendraparvata
and searching with Google I have found the book:
“Social Theory in Archaeology and Ancient History:
The Present and Future of Counternarratives” by Geoff Emberling
(Cambridge University Press, Nov 2015).
>At a time when archaeology has turned away from
questions of the long-term and large scale, this
collection of essays reflects on some of the
big questions in archaeology and ancient history…
>…The book concludes with a commentary by one of
the major voices in archaeological theory, Norman Yoffee.

So… I continued to search with “Norman Yoffee”
and I have found another more old book, in
which Yoffee was one of the authors…
Do you know the book “Archaeological Theory
Who Sets the Agenda?” (by Norman Yoffee,
Andrew Sherratt, Philip L. Kohl, Alison Wylie,
Christopher Chippendale, Clive Gamble,
Stephen Shennan, Kelley Hays, Miriam Start,
Tim Murray, Richard Bradley)?
>This book addresses the criticisms of postmodernist
writers about archaeology’s social role, and asserts
its intellectual importance and achievements in
discovering real facts about the human past.
>It looks forward to the creation of a truly global
consciousness of the origins of human societies
and civilizations.

It’s an old book published in July 1993…
and this volume consists of 11 papers, plus introduction,
which directly and indirectly critically review and
discuss the theoretical debates centred around
the development of post-processual archaeology.
The authors come from a variety of positions on
post-processual theory, ranging from the guardedly
supportive, the ambivalent, the constructively critical,
to the hostile.
Many of the papers were written for a session in
the 1988 Theoretical Archaeological Group (TAG)
conference at Sheffield University, England. …

>The subtitle of this book immediately raises
the issues of power and politics in archaeology:
how are archaeological agendas set and by whom?
>What are the hegemonic processes and structures
that ensure certain discourses are privileged?
>Given the criticisms that have been levelled at
archaeology for more than a decade by indigenous
people, feminists, and the post-processualists themselves,
such issues are fundamental in current theoretical debate.
>Unfortunately the politics of archaeological theory
building is hardly discussed, and little sense of
any analysis of who sets and defines the debates
emerges from the volume. In part, this is due to
the nature of theoretical debate in archaeology. …

At the end of my long message there are
the following questions to answer:
What kind of relationship do you think exists
between your own various attempts, the
careful archaeological analysis of the Shroud
and the various kinds of cultural conditioning
which influence the honest research?
What are the exact archaeological implications
deriving from your hypotheses?
— — —
In any case it seems to me really a strange
coincidence that a technology (= your interesting
“flour imprint technology”…) that enabled to create
the Shroud (see also the use of the presumed
“wooden framework”) has never been used another time …
Then this is a suspicious uniqueness.
What is your remark?

You might like to consider this image before returning to your laptop.

What does it say about the TS image (in this instance the lower face)? Smooth transitions in image density, reminiscent of a photograph taken in diffused light? Or blotchiness, consistent with a contact imprinting process?

Not sure to understand what you have in mind with the photograph above.
I used the same part of the face coming from the HD photograph with J Image. It is easy to see that the key parameter is the min value. Why to choose your value rather than another ? With different min values, you obtain different pictures.
Nevertheless, even in your picture, it’s easy to see that the “highest” parts of the face in red are surrounded by yellow areas. In these yellow areas, the “height” (density) is intermediate.
This is an example of what I call the subtlety of the TS image.

I have just added this graphic and a lengthy caption to the end of the posting, Thibault which should hopefully assist in seeing the role of the Min.% control, shown at two different settings, i.e. 0 and 33% for three different levels of image intensity. What works well for one particular image does not necessarily work well for another. Min % is essentially a gain control, optimizing sensitivity and range of response.

I shall postpone responding to your second point re image ‘subtlety’ until tomorrow.

See this new Thermal LUT image, added to end of posting, Thibault. If the TS image is uniquely “subtle” for the reasons you state, namely the (virtual) presence of raised yellow relief beneath the red, then so are model flour imprints, like this re-processing in Thermal LUT of the flour imprinst my fingers before and after washing that appeared earlier in the posting.

I shall be adding another section to the end of the posting later today, setting out the reasons why the flour-imprinting method can produce so subtle and TS-like an image, with a modicum of 3D properties. There are at least 4 independent factors that act independently and some might think cooperatively to produce a final image with semi-photograph TS-like properties. That doesn’t make the model right, merely useful – a tangible basis for further predictions and experimentation.

Working with ImageJ is certainly useful, I agree.
As for me, I’m currently working with GIMP (a free software more or less similar to Photoshop).
My goal is to study in depth the luminance (density) of the TS face.
It is a work in progress.
And I’m working with the HD pictures.
The face is THE challenge!

Meanwhile, it could be interesting to compare the hands.

It would be very helpful to:
1) artificially age your sample (using your oven)
2) and to give us a HD picture of the result.

“All attempts to create a Shroud-like image have failed to reproduce adequately the above characteristics. Some researchers have obtained coloration/images that look similar (refs) but no one has created images that match all microscopic and macroscopic characteristics of the Shroud image. The answer to the question of how the image was produced or what produced the image is still unknown. This is the main point of the “mystery of the Shroud.”
Regardless of the age of the Shroud, either medieval (1260 -1390) as dated by radiocarbon test (refs) or older as it results from other measurements (ref) and whatever the importance of historical documents about the existence of the Shroud before 1260 (refs) the most important question remains the same: how did the image of a man get on the Shroud?”

Those are not my words. They are the words of a pro-authenticist (Paolo di Lazzaro).

They sum up as well if not better than I can my reasons for interest in the TS. They are NOT ostensibly to do with authenticity (my mind having made up on that many years ago by the work of the three independent radiocarbon-dating laboratories, notwithstanding the decision to test from a single inconspicuous and otherwise unexceptional corner). They are to do with the nature of the TS image, and whether or not it’s true that it could never be replicated in the laboratory (or even home kitchen).

Folk who ply me with questions or protests about my ignoring the wider ”evidence” in favour of authenticity are wasting their time and mine. My focus as I say is not on authenticity. It’s on ability or otherwise to model and replicate (maybe not every minute detail, but key defining characteristics like negative image, superficiality, alleged 3D properties, microscopic characteristics etc).

Unfortunately we have not yet read the “Shroud Manifesto”,
the Colin’s challenge to the rest of the world …

Then:
Here few words (in the realm of Art) about
the possible “myth of Colin-Sisyphus”…

I can divulge a very short piece of an article of
the future art critic about what is possible
to define as “myth of Colin-Sisyphus”…:

“Colin-Sisyphus” contains a self-portrait of the artist
imprinted on a linen sheet… The scientist-artist claims
that the main key features defining this self-portrait
are similar those of the Shroud.

in other words …
I admit that your Shroud-Falsificationism can be
a kind of hard work that (at the end) should
deserve at least an Art prize….

>… Popper stresses the problem of demarcation —
distinguishing the scientific from the unscientific —
and makes falsifiability the demarcation criterion,
such that what is unfalsifiable is classified as
unscientific, and the practice of declaring
an unfalsifiable theory to be scientifically true
is pseudoscience. …

Link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability
— — —
So…
Where will be your new exhibition ?
Perhaps in the “Whitechapel Gallery” that exhibited
Pablo Picasso’s Guernica in 1938 (a part of a
touring exhibition organised by Roland Penrose
to protest the Spanish Civil War).
I have read something on this Gallery that
>…plays a unique role in London’s cultural landscape
and is pivotal to the continued growth of east London
as one of the world’s most vibrant contemporary art quarters…

Here an idea about another european alternative:
Barcelona has a wide range of cultural attractions and museums.

For example:
Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art
(Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona)
= MACBA – Plaça dels Angels – Barcelona, España…
— —
>…Tracer rounds can also have a mild incendiary effect,
and can ignite flammable substances on contact,
provided the tracer compound has started burning
and is still burning on impact. …

But…
>…Use of tracers is usually only authorized during military training…

Link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracer_ammunition
— — —
I have seen you had few interventions on your blog,
so I simply tried to fuel the interest… but …
I admit that I would have to avoid possible sources
of confusion for the readers.
— — —
Navigable waters :
The waterline and the safety line.

>The waterline is the line where the hull of a ship
meets the surface of the water, in concept or reality.
>Specifically, it is also the name of a special marking,
also known as the International Load Line, Plimsoll line
or water line…

>…My proposal is based upon an asymmetry between
verifiability and falsifiability; an asymmetry which
results from the logical form of universal statements.
For these are never derivable from singular statements,
but can be contradicted by singular statements.
— Karl Popper

Fine as far as it goes, Thibault, but what can GIMP or any other kind of digital re-processing of the TS face tell you, unless there’s a control? What would be your control? My flour-imprinting model may be wrong, but at least it provides me with a control, i.e. reference, against which I can judge whether what I’m seeing is unique or unremarkable.
Am not sure what you mean by “ageing” the images of those fingers (mine) in the oven. They have already come from an oven in which the wet linen was heated from room temperature up to 200 degrees C approx in the space of 10 to 15 minutes. The linen is no longer white at the end, more an ivory colour (as per the TS!). So why do you ask for a further heating when it’s already been artificially aged?

I am now drawing a line under my experimentation, at least for some weeks, and will for the duration be hanging up my scientist’s hat. What concerns me now is the issue of science versus pseudoscience, and I have not taken kindly to previous commentator’s attempt to turn the tables on me, making out that it is I who is guilty of pseudoscience, given the lengthy experimental programme (4years) the reporting of results in hundreds of postings and photographs, the constant urging of folk to try repeating my experiments in their own kitchens or laboratories.

I hope to complete my “Manifesto” in a couple of weeks or so. It will be written with the general non-specialist reader in mind, and will be shamelessly polemical. The scientific method has been hugely compromised in sindonology in my candid opinion by folk who have decided on the answer first, and then gone seeking so-called facts to back up their preconceptions. Sadly the media can rarely if ever be bothered to seek the views of scientists before placing those tales of mystery and imagination with great fanfare into the public domain. Somebody has to blow a whistle on the excesses of agenda-driven sindonology, and it might as well be me.

PS: see my new addition to end of posting. Image defintion has been increased from 72 to 300dpi by scanning the flour-imprinted linen instead of photographing.
Here’s a link to one of the new improved images. (Whether it displays here or not we’ll have to see).

This is the kind of pictures we need.
These imprints are truly TS like. In fact your imprints of the hands are the best I ever seen( much more convincing than those of Garlaschelli for example…).

Some remarks:
– It’s clear that the oil-assisted imprint (on left) is much more convincing than the “without oil” imprint (on right). I now understand the need to use oil . It’s easy to understand the reason.
– I now clearly see that the background has about the same color than the background of the TS. Your modus operandi automatically produces artificial aging.

Question:
– can you confirm that your imprints are not visible on the back side of your samples ?
– And now? What do you plan to do ?
If I were you, I would use your samples to look at them microscopically.

The question of reverse side coloration is one that is preoccupying me somewhat at the moment, basically because it’s so variable. On some specimens, there’s scarcely any reverse side image. On others the reverse side image is virtually indistinguishable from the contact side, and
there are no immediate clues as yet to why one sees this variation. It could be something as simple as batch-to-batch variation with the linen, linked to the thickness, the closeness of weave, my stretching it when wet to reduce creases, prior laundring etc. Or it might be more complex, related maybe to the oven temperature, type or amount of vegetable oil. I shall try to look out the specimens that have mainly TS-like frontal image only and photograph them, if only to show there’s no barrier in principle to one-sided imprinting, even if I see it less often than I would like.

My immediate plans? To take a break in your delightful country, where I shall write my manifesto.
Future lines of research? Frankly, there’s not a lot more I can do without specialized equipment. That would include a half decent microscope with improved depth of field, if only to escape the charge from a certain laser expert that I don’t know how to use my focus wheel …

I’m especially interested to know the mechanism of coloration in the flour-imprinting model. Might it involve the release of a natural oil or other liquid at high temperature that then percolates a short distance between fibres via capillary action (half tone effect?). Or is a gas released that has a scorching action in the immediate vicinity, again accounting for half-tone effect. Don’t expect immediate answers.

PS: I should have said “mechanism of coloration of the washed imprints” needless to say, since the primary bold “image”, better described as an encrustation, is clearly a Maillard browning product formed between amino acids and reducing sugars. It’s the final nebulous image that remains after washing that is the source of curiosity. It too might conceivably be a Maillard product, mabe invoving functional groups intrinsic to linen as distinct from flour, or there again it might be something entirely different. Does anyone have access to an infrared and/or uv visible reflectance spectrometer? if so, I’d be happy to send them a sample of imprinted fabric. Alternatively they could make their own in less than half an hour.

Good to see you are carrying on your always intriguing work, Colin. As I reflect on your flour, oil and baking method, I can’t help but be struck by the parallel to the subject of the piece — who himself said ‘I am the bread of life.” Perhaps there is a clue in that. 🙂

Suppose you were an underemployed medieval cleric, one of 5 or 6 attached to an absenteee knight’s private chapel in a remote location. You want to model what Joseph of Arimathea’s linen might have looked like, 1300 or so years after being removed from the body of a recently crucified man. How would you do it? Would you:

(a) be technologically precocious, and quickly cobble together a uv laser, which you then trained on linen as a series of high-energy pulses so as to get what you hoped might be an incredibly ghostly-looking image, ancillary hardware unspecified,
or would you:

(b) raid the pantry for some flour and oil, and then draw lots as to who will submit to a somewhat messy contact-imprinting, with the bread-making oven commandeered for the duration?

Good question. I’m not sure b) would be my first choice though it does have its merits (as you are demonstrating). I likely would have chosen something that approximates sweat and blood but that required less recipe juggling — like lemon juice or some matter of dye. I would then have used solar radiation to bring out the image and give it an aged look. We know this wasn’t the method because of what science we do have on the Shroud — but these to me would be the intuitive methods as they drew on existing imaging methods. Now you could righty argue that the cleric had to come up with something unique, a novel method, otherwise some keen eyed medieval sciencebod would have exposed (or replicated) the method.

Your current theory is easily your strongest. You’ve got a logical motivation for using the method, the resources needed would be easily accessible, and you’ve replicated the model and gotten characteristics close to the Shroud — as mentioned by another commenter above, you may be the closest yet of all the attempts made by a pro-medieval proponent. No small feat.

Blimey. Another appreciative comment. Thanks David. I must be doing something right at last, or at any rate, marginally less wrong.

Yes, flour is not the most obvious imprinting medium, especially if one sets out to simulate sweat (blood imprints being a separate issue).But if you read your Heller, you will see that Sam Pellicori, pro-authenticty we are told, set out to model the body imprint using lemon juice and oil, but was immediately given the thumbs down by fellow STURP members, Heller anyway, on the grounds that anything that was soluble would migrate, read smudge, and fail to match TS characteristics, the latter with mainly (but not exclusively!) frontal side imprinting only. Joe Accetta tried to revive a similar idea, one you mention, namely of dye-imprinting off woodblocks, and tried to get around the migration issue by incorporating gum arabic, supposedly to increase viscosity and discourage migration. It was an attractive idea, but when I checked it out I found that gum arabic does not in fact appreciably increase viscosity (different from merely adding “bulk”) and was not the answer. Thus the gradual drift to something that was particulate (flour) as distinct from a soluble agent like lemon juice or dye.

Am finding when I “unspin” image threads from the flour imprints, the results are virtually the same as obtained with the Mark 1 “scorch model” using much-derided one-step image-making with a heated metal template. I may post a picture here shortly. Much food for thought (and needing some further squinting through my crappy microscope when I’m back at home, presently enjoying non-stop rain here in the ‘glorious’ south of France…)

PS to DavidG: on checking back through my own archives, here and on my dormant sciencebuzz site, I find that lemon juice and the invisible ink effect were preoccupying my thoughts back in October 2014.

it’s a long and tortuous account (even after a total rewrite) but if you have time or inclination to read it carefully you’ll see my surprise on learning that the invisible ink effect with lemon juice is not due to acid per se as first assumed. it’s said to due to a totally unexpected Maillard reaction, due to Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) decomposing to a 4-carbon reducing sugar with glucose like-like properties. Read on and you’ll see the train of thought that was thus engendered, leading to tests with white flour as a “sweat substitute” simply as a means of exploiting the Maillard reaction as a means of making an imprint turn brown in the oven! The advantages of using a particulate imprinting medium were noted!

This blogging investigator has been reporting his findings online for 4 years. Having chosen to use the internet as his medium of communication, he has quietly been monitoring the manner in which the major search engines allow his research to reach his target audience, namely those who input either “shroud of turin ” or “turin shroud”.

Google has largely delivered the expected performance, based on visits to my sites, links on other sites, whilst noting that is Google.uk.

Google.com (which US-based searchers will access) demotes my postings relative to Google.uk. That is tolerable, while hardly conducive to the sharing of international research and scholarship, But as soon as one looks at the alternatives to Google, naming no names. one disappears almost completely off the listings, at least the first 10 or 20 pages of returns.

What is the point of carefully composing my flagged-up Manifesto, work in progress, if the Internet and its search engines are likely to disregard it completely?

After much deliberation I have decided to keep thoughts and suspicions to myself as to why my postings fail to appear on`those (it has to be said) mainly US-based search engines, while those on other “Shroudie”, mainly pro-authenticity sites do. Nuff said.

OK. maybe I’m boring or too sciency. But how do the search engines and their algorithms know that? Or is there human intervention that we’re not told about, or commercial influences via advertising, feeding through to what appears on search returns?

My Manifesto now goes on the back burner indefinitely. It will not appear unless or until I detect some signs of objectivity and neutrality in the listings of the major internet search engines. That might take months, It might take years, But until it does, this hitherto internet-based research project is at an end.

Why not submit a paper to a science journal, or at least an article to a skeptic site which might then draw more attention to your work and the ongoing blog. I know your current model is a work in progress but even if you submitted what you’ve got thus far it would be very valuable. What you really need is a to have a cub reporter find your work — who then goes back to the publisher exclaiming ‘Here’s our Easter article, this gent has a fascinating theory that explains how and why the Turin Shroud was made!” Stop the presses!
It’s that time of year…they’re looking.

First, let me say this David. What I have to say now may look superficially like a conspiracy theory, and some may conclude it’s an anti-Catholic one. I don’t think you will, or rather hope you won’t, and I say that in the knowledge of your own religious persuasion (I’ve read your book!). Nope, It’s not about Catholicism. It’s about the American (and dare I say Canadian) propensity to place political correctness (i.e not offending perceived sensibilities) at the top of all considerations where expression of opinion is concerned. Individuals self-censor, and the MSM follows suit, blocking expression of robust opinions. I have long considered PC to be the scourge of the modern age.

So where is this going, and how does this relate to your suggestions?

Scarcely a month goes by, as Hugh Farey has observed in his latest News Letter, where we don’t see some hugely speculative idea re the the Turin Shroud and how it acquired its image, virtually all in a 1st century context, ignoring or rejecting the radiocarbon dating.

What about the journalists who report these brainwaves, sprinkling their articles with terms like “mystery”, “enigma”, “defying scientific explanation” etc, keeping the show on the road one might say, regardless of their own thoughts that may be well concealed?

Do they ever put “shroud of turin” into their search engine? Probably some do, and if based in North America they will get back returns that in my view have all been screened by human agency for that “political correctness”. That is why you will find my site absent if you search on google.com (USA), for which one needs to enter http://www.google.com/ncr (ncr = no country redirection). When I say absent I mean absent – it’s nowhere in any of the 28 pages of returns – extraordinary don’t you think given I’ve produced hundreds of postings on 2 or 3 different sites over 4 years? But if you go to google.uk (or your google.ca) then there’s a chance of picking me up about page 5 to 7 of returns, and in the earlier returns one would appear to have a greater proportion of distinctly sceptical opinions in the titles or brief resume that follows, i.e. less “PC”.

So the journos who bother to look, at least in the USA and probably most in the UK, Canada, Australia and rest of the English-speaking world will not, or rather are not allowed to, find my postings and opinions. It’s even worse with the non-Google sites like Bing, Yahoo, AOL etc etc. Why, why,why????? What IS going on?

I say there’s human intervention, that the returns are not those generated entirely by an algorithm that simply monitors hits, links etc etc. If that were the case, I’d be prominent on google.com, given the number of times Dan Porter used to cover my postings, often putting my name in the title, and invariably inserting links to my sites.

As I say, it’s about political correctness, about protecting the sensibilities of Shroud-respecting Roman Catholics mainly, whether they want it or not. Robust opinion and free-thinking is being censored, and it’s happening in the so-called Free World.

All of a sudden the Shroud of Turin shrinks in importance. There is a far, far greater issue that needs addressing here, and for me to go cap-in-hand to a cub reporter would be to acquiesce to something that in my view is totally and utterly wrong. There should be no censorship of the World of Ideas.

I understand why the internet may not have turned out to be the potent means I first imagined for reporting a research investigation in real time, given the preponderantly pro-authenticity nature of sindonological websites, and just if not more important, the huge popularity of social media, where much that is said goes unreported and/or overlooked by search engines. But I still believe that it should allow the common man a voice in the world of ideas, which incidentally is my preferred description of Shroud research. No, it’s not really the world of science, not hard science, given there’s no means or prospect of testing one’s ideas by taking samples from the real thing for comparison.

So I intend now to draw a line under 4 years of internet-based research, and leave the MSM – with or without the aid of search engines (almost certainly without) – to find my stuff for themselves. What I may do in the next week or so is make a list of what I consider my 10 chief findings, and add links to the relevant postings. It’ll go up as one more comment, not a new posting. The present one is my last, unless or until there’s a major shift in search engine returns.

Thanks for the tips, David, and for taking the trouble to post them. but I prefer to keep my own counsel from now on, feeling as I say that search engines are not properly supportive of lone bloggers keen to get their message across. We are witnessing a new form of tyranny.

Colin,
“So I intend now to draw a line under 4 years of internet-based research, and leave the MSM – with or without the aid of search engines (almost certainly without) – to find my stuff for themselves. What I may do in the next week or so is make a list of what I consider my 10 chief findings, and add links to the relevant postings. It’ll go up as one more comment, not a new posting. The present one is my last, unless or until there’s a major shift in search engine returns.”
It’s your decision.
For my part, I have decided to pursue your promising experiments in the coming months.

Here’s the proof that something is seriously amiss and dysfunctional with regard to google.com listings (aka google.US, accessible as http://www.google.com/ncr).

Enter (turin shroud) and you will generally find this site somewhere in the list of returns. Enter (shroud of turin) and it’s NOWHERE to be seen in any of the 28 pages of returns. Use Search Tools to select for Past Month, and this site appears on the second page when searching (shroud of turin)! Select for Past Year and it’s still around, albeit currently on Page 8.

Most folk one suspects will search for (shroud of turin) without a time filter, making this site TOTALLY INVISIBLE. A quirk of the algorithm, given all the detailed aspects noted above? I hardly think so. What we see surely is evidence of human intervention, preventing this site from being discovered by most searchers. There appears to be a mechanism whereby a site can be blacklisted, at least where casual searches are made without filters etc. and it’s only happening as far as I can tell in Stateside USA.

How can a search engine call itself robust when a search under (turin shroud) delivers a vastly different set and/or ranking of returns from one done under (shroud of turin)? It would be understandable if quotation marks had been placed around the terms, to signal that word order was important, but they weren’t. (The brackets are used here simply to separate the search terms from my own text – they weren’t entered into search box).
Update, Saturday evening: have been running all kinds of additional tests, like trying google.ie (Ireland), different browsers etc. The interesting thing is that this site now appears on google.com on Page 8 of returns for (shroud of turin). That’s a considerable improvement on this morning when it was absent from all 28 pages of returns! Now what’s caused this sudden rectifying one wonders? I may never know, but one swallow does not make a summer. I shall continue checking google.com (and maybe other search engines, though I use them only rarely) to see whether I’ve been permanently reinstated or not. I shall only resume blogging when absolutely certain that my site is visible to 300 million souls in the US.

11pm sat: have just checked again, first entering (turin shroud) into google.com, and finding this site listed on Page 5, then entering (shroud of turin) and finding this site totally missing, despite checking 31 pages!

There is no point in using the internet to disseminate one’s reseacrh and ideas if the major search engine performs so abysmally on a now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t basis.

Have just added this to the end of my December 2015 posting re fluorescence, or rather lack thereof as regards superficial scorches, and now haem pigments in blood:

Update: Monday 15th Feb: anyone wishing to see “fluorescence”, or rather falsely cited fluorescence, being peddled to serve a pseudoscientific pro-authenticity agenda, and an especially bigoted one at that, should take a look at this image that has just appeared on the Stephen Jones site (to which I refuse to link, don’t ask!) and its accompanying caption.

No, it’s not a fluorescence photograph. Where did he get that idea? It’s simply a photoedited Enrie image in which density has been colour coded – with highest density being red. No, none of the red is due to “blood fluorescence”, given that the non-bloodied nose, beard, chin crease etc are red as well as bloodstains like the “3″ on forehead. The iron has to be chemically stripped out of haem in order to see porphyrin fluorescence, as extensively described by STURP’s Heller and Adler. If it really were a fluorescent image, then one could not accept Jones’s claim that it’s only the blood that fluoresces. The body image would have to be described as fluorescent as well, albeit as yellow rather than red fluorescnce.

The image that one sees above is a ‘flat’ version of what one obtains in ImageJ’s “thermal LUT’ mode, which is a sub-program in the 3D menu, except that there’s no 3D-rendering. (ImageJ does not allow one to remove the slight 3D rendering that one sees with the z slide control in its minimal value of 0.1).

Yes and no.
This image is in fact the cover photo of the article of Miller and Pellicori: “UV Photography of the Shroud of Turin” (Journal of Biological Photography, Vol 49, N°3, July 1981). I have this paper.
It seems to be a false-color enhanced reproduction of the UV/VIS fluorescence photograph of the face. it is not a ” photoedited Enrie image etc.”.

Unfortunately, in the paper itself the face is not shown entirely.
Page 80 we see the upper part of the ventral head area (hair, eyes) and page 81 the lower part (mustache and beard).

Of course the caption on Stephen Jones site (” Above: “The Shroud face, as seen in fluorescent light.”[6], showing that while its bloodstains fluoresce, i.e. they were formed from real blood, the image does not fluoresce, showing it is not a thermal scorch [7].”) is meaningless. Bloodstains do not fluoresce.And the red is only a false color.

Bloodstains do not fluoresce at all (as expected): they are black in the UV/VIS photographs (but with a highly fluorescent border in many cases)
The Shroud features, in general, do not emit any visible emission under UV while the background emits a yellow-green color.

However,it is true that on the face the UV/VIS “darkness” of the nose, the mustache and the beard suggests (repeat: suggests) that some blood is present in these areas.

Thanks for the comment, Thibault, with that interesting though problematic account of where and how the picture first appeared. (I had tried tracing its origin with tineye, but got no further than a site called shroud2000 with a gallery of Barrie M.Schwortz’s photos without detailed captions).
Notwithstanding your comment, and notwithstanding that the complete photograph appeared on the cover of the Pellicori and Miller paper, but curiously not inside, about which more later, I’m sticking with my guns. It is NOT a fluorescence photograph, which would probably have shown little more than the serum halos around bloodstains that you mention. It is an Enrie 1931 negative that has been confusing photoedited to give false-colour to higer density regions of body image (negative white to red).

The choice of red as false colour makes the picture not only scientifically worthless, but a source of confusion and dare I say pseudoscience, especially if used to support the notion that the beard and moustache and nose etc are heavily bloodstained. I’d be interested to know what captions appeared on those two half pictures you mention. One wonders if the publishers of the journal played too great a role in assembling that paper, and got things DISASTROUSLY WRONG.

PS: Here’s a REAL uv-fluorescence photograph from the Miller/Pellicori paper without the ridiculous false colour (or the equally false and misleading brightness for that matter, mimicking fluorescence when there’s in fact scarcely any there!):

I have a search engine and ultimately Hugh Farey to thank for the image, which he inserted into a shroudstory comments thread back in Dec 2014. As he pointed out, it’s well nigh impossible to find anything about that paper on the internet – not even an abstract thus far – unless one’s prepared to cough up the necessary to purchase it (which I’m loath to do when already it seems the science – or at any rate presentation thereof – was seriously misleading).

You should be right (or not, as I think) about the fact that the photograph in question is simply “an Enrie 1931 negative that has been confusing photoedited to give false-colour to higher density regions of body image (negative white to red).”
For the simple reason that there is a correlation between the visible negative photograph (Enrie) and the UV-Vis photograph.
The advantage of the UV-Vis is mainly to show some features that are almost invisible in the normal photograph (like the bright halos around most of the bloodstains or the details of the scourge marks).
However you are right when you wrote: ” The choice of red as false colour makes the picture not only scientifically worthless, but a source of confusion and dare I say pseudoscience, especially if used to support the notion that the beard and moustache and nose etc are heavily bloodstained. I’d be interested to know what captions appeared on those two half pictures you mention. One wonders if the publishers of the journal played too great a role in assembling that paper, and got things DISASTROUSLY WRONG.”

You wrote: “I’d be interested to know what captions appeared on those two half pictures you mention. ”
I can give you not only the captions and also the UV-Vis photographs.
But for that you have to allow me to show them directly in my comments in this blog.

(from Colin Berry: I recently discovered that this WordPress site offers a means of editing other folks’ comments so as to allow a late insertion of a photograph etc. I immediately decided it’s not something I would want to do unless requested. I’m testing the facility right now to see if it works with words, and might try later inserting a test picture as well. Let’s see if these words appear)

Please see the end of your comment, Thibault, to which I’ve added some text, showing that in principle it might be possible to incorporate passages of text and probably pictures too, say into a priming comment from you, though you would need to email what you want to be added.

As regards the first part of your comment, I’m having some difficulty deciding whether you agree, disagree, or both as regards my contention that the so-called fluorescence photograph does NOT show fluorescence, which as you say would be limited to the margins of bloodstains and thus likely to be scarcely if at all visible in an untouched photograph taken in uv light. So it’s a complete mystery why anyone should have considered the initial photograph needed to be given all that red and yellow false colour, making it seem as if the blood at least was fluorescent – as claimed mistakenly by Jones – and/or making it seems as if there was blood on all those other places mentioned. Why has no one noticed this earlier, given the 1981 paper was published over 35 years ago?

I shall post this now, and later add another comment, with another photograph (mine) showing what happens when one uses ImageJ Thermal LUT mode to add false colour to the Enrie negative. The result is virtually the same in principle as the so-called “fluorescence” photograph.

PS Here’s the promised image, added as an afterthought using the handy “edit comment” facility. It’ll probably appear as a link (am not sure why some pasted photos copied/pasted between postings from within this site appear as photos, others as links):

That’s the contentious image on the left, compared with the Enrie B/W negative that’s been given false colour using Thermal LUT in proportion to image intensity (right). Note their close similarity, grounds for concluding that the false colour given to the one on the left is hugely misleading if labelled as a uv fluorescence photograph – which it may have been, but showing no genuine red fluorescence in all those locations like nose, beard, moustache, creases etc, and no genuine yellow fluorescence either for that matter.

“As regards the first part of your comment, I’m having some difficulty deciding whether you agree, disagree, or both as regards my contention that the so-called fluorescence photograph does NOT show fluorescence, which as you say would be limited to the margins of bloodstains and thus likely to be scarcely if at all visible in an untouched photograph taken in uv light.”

I agree that the so-called fluorescence photograph does not truly show fluorescence.
My remark concerned only the basic photograph which is perhaps the fluorescence photograph. But in this case the manipulation of the original photograph is highly misleading.There is ” no genuine red fluorescence in all those locations like nose, beard, moustache, creases etc, and no genuine yellow fluorescence either for that matter” as you wrote.

In conclusion I agree on the substance of your criticism of Stephen Jones.

Thanks Thibault, and to you Hugh for your comments. I’m busy right now with final chores before returning home tomorrow, so will have to be brief. It seems we all see eye-to-eye now in regarding the glowing red (and yellow) as having nothing to do with fluorescence under uv. Maybe someone needs to inform Stephen Jones, but it won’t be me.

I shall try downloading that software to allow folk to add pictures to their comments, though with nigh on 70 comments on this, my last posting barring a major change in the manner in which search engines rank blog sites, the scope for using that facility grows less with each passing day.

I think I have sussed out what the search engines are doing. They treat their sites as a shopkeeper does his display window, attempting to create a good first impression. The items considered to have greatest popular appeal are placed at the front. Many others, despite a longstanding presence on the web, regularly updated and with a comments facility too get pushed to the back where they become essentially out of sight – serving merely to avoid an empty look. One cannot compete against that kind of arbitrary re-ranking of the first-stage ‘printout’ from the algorithm. The search engines are there primarily to sell their lucrative advertising slots: the ranking of sites is driven primarily by populist sentiment.

I’m thinking of suggesting a new tab or subheading be placed on Page 1 of returns, labelled “Click Here For The Serious Stuff”.

I think Colin is correct, as the false-colour image on the cover of that edition of the JBP (not specific to the Miller/Pelicori paper within it), is reversed with respect both to the real Shroud and to the published UV images . There was a wide variety of false-colour images about in the early days, probably from the Jackson/Jumper stable, and the editors of JBP presumably just used one of them.

This article, like so many others regarding the Shroud, makes frequent mention of there being “wounds” visible in the body image, mixed in with references to associated bloodstains

Were that true, then the case for authenticity is strengthened, given that the nature of the body image is still a matter for speculation (though this investigator considers he has provided a feasible model with his flour-imprinting/oven-baking model).

However, it’s simply not true that the body image shows injury or damage to flesh and skin. The evidence for scalp wounds from an otherwise invisible crown of thorns rests on bloodstains on the head and hair. Evidence for a nail wound in a hand or wrist rests on bloodstains alone, and likewise for a lance wound in the side. The scourge marks, supposedly from a Roman flagrum, some 372 of them in all we’re told, are entirely due to imprinted blood, there being no evidence in the body image.

One does not wish to make light of the task of the medieval artisan, intent on simulating/modelling what the double body imprint in sweat and blood of the crucified Jesus might look like some 1300 years later, as per radiocarbon dating (1260-1390). But let’s not overstate it either. The task is greatly simplified if there’s no need to simulate wounds (punctures, gashes etc) in the basal body image, if all that needs to be done is to paint blood onto the Shroud linen at all the ‘biblically-correct” locations so as merely to SUGGEST the presence of underlying wounds. That’s as far as it goes – suggested, not actual images of wounds,. Why would wounds leave an imprint anyway if still seeping blood?

If attempting to apply the scientific method to the mysterious and ‘enigmatic’ Shroud, it’s absolutely imperative that facts be ruthlessly separated from fancy. Were that done more often, the Shroud might seem marginally less mysterious and enigmatic, while still undoubtedly a work of human ingenuity.

There’s a persistent theme on display in the preceding comments here. It’s the problem faced by anyone attempting to imprint off a 3D subject – living, dead or statue – onto linen. It’s variously known as “lateral distortion” arising from the so-called “wrap-around effect”. Sure, it’s easy to demonstrate for oneself at home, say by smearing one’s face with chocolate spread or similar, then lying down and getting someone to press linen onto and around the sides of one’s face. Sure, the result could be the so-called Agamemnon mask-effect, one where the face looks far too wide, showing that “lateral distortion”.

But what’s this got to do with the Shroud of Turin one might ask? My answer: precious little, if anything, provided one starts by making some reasonable assumptions, like:

1. The Shroud is of medieval origin, if one accepts the radiocarbon dating, warts an’ all.
2. Someone – a medieval artist or mere artisan – set out to model what a double-body IMPRINT onto linen might look, first when fresh, and then aged for many centuries.
3. That same individual then did some trial experiments, so became quickly aware of the image distortion that can result from using a 3D subject to produce a 2D imprint.
4. That individual did not abandon the project. Instead he persevered to produce the image that today we call the Turin Shroud.

So how did he get a realistic-looking body image? Answer: he didn’t. That was not his goal. His goal was to produce what would be immediately perceived as a CONTACT IMPRINT. It did not need to look too realistic, like a well-executed painting. Had he done so, folk would have scarcely given it a second glance (“Oh look, another devotional work of art”). No, he wanted an image that was strangely unrealistic, and in that respect could be said to have been successful beyond his wildest dreams. So what did he do “right” in terms of producing a highly credible artefact, suggestive of a real body imprint onto a sheet of linen?

Answer: he wanted an image that was what today we call a “negative”. Parts of the anatomy that an artist might show in lighter tones, notably the light-reflecting prominences such as nose forehead, chin etc, would be shown dark, and parts that an artist might show as dark, due either to being in hollows, like eye sockets, or in the shadows cast by prominences, would be shown as light. Why the need to reverse the tones? Because that’s what happens when one imprints off a 3D template, instead of placing it in the light and painting it, or taking a modern photograph. Our medieval ‘modeller’ would have been fully aware of the tone-reversal that occurs with contact imprinting, from artefacts like brass rubbings, heat scorches from hot irons etc.

All that remained was to obtain that negative imprint in a manner that made it IMMEDIATELY obvious to a first-time viewer that it was an imprint, not a painting. That required imprinting off the highest relief only, studiously avoiding the slightest hint of wrap -around effect. The end result was to produce an imprint akin to that of a footprint in wet sand – negative with “bits missing”. How might that have been best achieved? It was a question of ensuring the technology was fit-for-purpose, as indeed it was. How was, or might that, have been achieved?
End of Part 1. Part 2 is in preparation and will follow in due course.
I have placed a copy of this comment onto my own site:https://shroudofturinwithoutallthehype.wordpress.com/

So I chanced a comment. It was immediately tagged “pending approval” or similar. After a long wait, a check on my Disqus archive carried a bold red label “Removed”, as if the sentiments expressed had caused offence.

I see this posting is still high in the list of returns for (shroud of turin) on a Google search, despite there having been no new comments in over a year.
Do current visitors look at the comments, and if so is anyone interested in knowing some new research data from a modelling exercise that might come as a surprise?

That’s a link to my site, but I’d be happy to provide a brief summary here of my flour-imprinting/oven-roasting model: it might plausibly have been used in the 14th century to mimic what an ancient sweat/blood imprint of the crucified Jesus might have looked like (imprint, please note, faint, fuzzy, tone-reversed negative etc etc, most definitely NOT a painting).
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
That’s Crux (the site’s name), describing itself as “Covering all things Catholic” – with tables labelled “Church”, “Faith” , “Life”.

Well, nothing’s ever old news where scientific research is concerned, and I have no issue with the data, merely with the partisan, pro-authenticity way the paper was presented, the Introduction especially.

The chief reason is this. I have been monitoring the returns on google,com for (shroud of turin) very carefully, and I have to say am not liking what I am seeing. One particular gripe is the way that a particular story, in this instance the Nature DNA report, appears 17 times no less in the first 10 pages of returns (that’s 17% approx of the total, blocking out others – like ME!!) merely because it’s been reported upon by 17 different news outlets.

That is frankly ridiculous, given that all but one are secondary reports that add virtually nothing to the original except instant opinion from a journalist or agency-reporter who in most cases is ill-equipped to judge the quality or significance of the data (indeed, the readers’ comments, if invited, can often be a lot more cogent and well-informed ).

Fortunately then, Nature journal itself has a comments facility hosted by Disqus, of which this blogger availed himself, using his ColinB login. I took the liberty of adding my full name at the end, as well as the doctorate degree (not something I do often, but considered might be worth flagging up for the benefit of Nature’s primarily scientific readership, to say nothing of helping to get the comment approved – .given that current comments at any rate are all pre-moderated).

It’s 2 months since I last placed a comment on this my Turin Shroud site. I’ve been busy elsewhere – like my sciencebuzz site – but also picking up the threads of an investigation into some other enigmas that were temporarily shelved some 4 years ago.

Here’s a summary posted just a few minutes ago on that other multi-enigma system – Neolithic Britain’s Wiltshire’s monuments (Stonehenge, Avebury stone circle, Silbury Hill etc):

1. Stonehenge, Avebury and other standing stones served as bird perches, the latter being encouraged to ‘adopt’ the site for the purpose of excarnation of the recently deceased. The primary purpose of excarnation was to (a) release the soul and (b) to isolate the skeleton that was then further cleansed by cremation. The cremated bones were then either buried in situ, OR interred in a nearby round or long burial barrow OR taken back by relatives to the deceased’s home.
2. Silbury Hill was a repository for soft organs, probably harvested prior to avian or other excarnation, possibly the heart only. Silbury was what might be called a local speciality provided at the Avebury site/complex, some distance from the Stonehenge/Durrington Walls/Woodhenge/barrow complex i.e. 25 miles away. The soft organs were probably interred with a handful of the deceased’s local turf and soil, probably with a deliberate inclusion of earthworms to ensure complete integration between old and new soil.
3. The carpentry aka woodworking joints at Stonehenge were an aid to construction, rather then necessary for final stability (see schematic accompanying this post). They served to fix and partly stabilise the intermediary arch-like geometry before removal of the earthern “formwork” i.e. the ramp followed by placement of rammed rubble around the base of each pillar for final anchoring of the structure.
4. The bluestones were chosen for the Mark 1 Stonehenge because – being smaller than the Mark 2 sarsens, the working surfaces i.e. tops were at eye level and thus visible. They would have quickly become unsightly with uneaten flesh, bird droppings etc. Thus the desirability of importing igneous bluestone in place of local sarsen sandstone. That’s because rocks of igneous origin, i.e. soldified magma and/or lava, (e.g. the predominant dolerites and rhyolites of Preseli and other Welsh ‘bluestones’) are non-porous and liquid -repellent, and thus easier to keep clean and presentable. It may be the lack of local bluestone that prompted the construction of the sarsen megaliths at Stonehenge. Being so much higher, the tops were largely out of human sight, and thus seen as safer more attractive places for scavenger birds (crows, ravens, rooks, seagulls etc).to perch, feed, roost and maybe even nest.

PS: the henges, as in StoneHENGE and Avebury HENGE – which is an encircling bank/ditch cut into the chalk – a uniquely “British” landscape feature – have been the subject of much speculation as to their purpose. The bank and ditch are in the wrong configuration to be defensive.

I say they were a ploy to attract scavenging birds, probably seagulls from the southern chalk coastline, which could be lured inland by a man-made look-alike cliff face, visible from afar to birds on the wing, albeit a few metres high.

Britain lacks vultures, so voracious seagulls were chosen and coaxed in as the next best thing…

“Might Stonehenge have been designed as an easily-spottable feeding station for high-flying seagulls – as perhaps was the nearby “Cursus”? ”

Shroud of Turin? My task is done. But when time permits I shall go through postings and add a summary, stating how it contributed (or not) to the final conclusion, namely that the TS negative image is a baked-on flour imprint from a real medieval man or bas relief onto wet linen (or something similar in principle).

The seizure and “curating” of other people’s original web content, read genteel pirating, is now accepted practice Stateside, aided by sites such as this one that advise how to do it with a clear conscience and a minimum of hassle.

Build Meaningful Relationships
When handled correctly, your content curation can help you build relationships with others in your industry. Prior to using an article, you should always contact its author and ask for permission to use it on your own site. Once permission has been granted, be sure you link prominently to the original source and notify the original author as soon as it has been posted. You’ll likely find that in many cases, the author will promote the repost on social media, possibly bringing you a few new followers along the way.
And later:

Create a One-Stop Content Shop
The overall goal with your content creation is to create your own library of informative articles and blogs, directly on your site. Instead of requiring your visitors to click on a link and visit an external site, curation allows guests to stay on your site and keep reading, while also taking in any other content you’ve posted. This one-stop content shop will encourage people to visit your site on a regular basis.
Your content strategy should involve adding interesting blogs, articles, status updates, and news on a regular basis. By curating relevant content from other websites, you’ll increase the value of your website without having to take hours out of your busy schedule to develop original articles and news updates.

Yes, tell me about it.. But one’s not supposed systematically to blunt the provider’s own message, nor deprive them of search engine rankings that by rights should be theirs’. Unless that is one’s set oneself up (or been set up by others) specifically to intercept and snuff out ‘off -mesaage’ content.

Message to any US citizen who might have stumbled accidentally on this site, e.g. by personal recommendation. Nope, you would not have discovered it by entering (shroud of turin) into Google (google.com that is, i.e. the one you get when googling Stateside). Why not? Because according to google.com, this site does not exist, despite the hundreds of postings here and on my sciencebuzz site, despite any number of ‘curated’ versions of the postings having appeared on Dan Porter’s shroudstory.com, prior to its being wound up December last year. So have I been doing something wrong at a technical level, perhaps, that has kept me off google.com’s radar screen? That was the persistent message from Dan Porter, suggesting ever so helpfully I was maybe not doing this or that right (like failing to make proper links to social media sites etc). Well, I’m doing something right here in my own country, inasmuch as entering (shroud of turin) into google (which is automatically google.uk by default, NOT google.com) shows me on page 4, with which I’m entirely content. So how do I know I’m not listed (or more probably have been DE-LISTED) on google.com? Answer? By typing google.com/ncr into the address bar. Ncr is short for ‘no country redirect’, which takes me to the US-version, not the default UK one.
So, I post new and original onto my blog sites in the UK, most of it anti-authenticity needless to say. It gets instantly hoovered up and ‘curated’ by a US-based site (up till December). My claims and sometimes even full name frequently appear in those titles. Result: a US-based site uses my content to preserve or even enhance its position on Page 1 of google.com returns. Oh, and let’s not forget the 2000 and more comments I’m said by the site owner to have placed on that site. And what do I get? At best a small lift in google.uk, while CONTINUING TO REMAIN INVISIBLE to any Stateside searcher who simply googles (shroud of turin) without the kind of qualifiers (white flour etc) that presuppose a subject ‘insider’ with prior knowledge.
So why is this happening – something that is censorship by any other name?

It’s not only shroudstory that is or was into the business of content curation. Google almost certainly does it as well, as I’ve discovered from closely following the fate of what I currently post on entirely different topics (Stonehenge etc). Google’s curation of its algorithm-generated raw returns can happen within hours, sometimes minutes: one wonders whether the regulatory authorities in Europe are aware of this (possibly not, judging by its half-hearted threats to make Google reveal its algorithm, assuming that it’s robotic, pre-programmed IT technology alone that is promoting Google’s own sites and businesses at competitors’ expense). When curation becomes effective censorship, the problem with Google becomes far, far more serious than one of anti-competitive abuse of market-leader near- monopoly’. Google Curate as I now call it (or, on bad days. Google the Hutt) might, just (might just) be sufficient to explain why I’m invisible to stateside searchers. But I doubt that is the entire issue. There’s another even more disturbing possibility that needs to be addressed, namely that third party interests in the States, with or without the passive cooperation or even active connivance of Google, are preventing the general searcher from seeing new ideas that conflict with someone’s all-consuming, single-minded agenda. Quite how that could work in practice, e.g. whether it works via paying extra to eliminate off-message content, or indirectly by failing to place ads on Google, or serially placing/withdrawing as reward/punishment, is anyone’s guess. The mere fact that these possibilities exist in theory should be sufficient to make the leaders of the so-called Free World take preemptive action against Google (not forgetting less popular search engines) e.g. by making them sign up to a code of practice, maybe voluntary to start with. Failing that, they could be required to give prominent “health warnings” on their home page to those naive or foolish enough to assume that the returns they see, unless flagged otherwise, are free of covert commercial – or worse still- ideological taint.
We always used to think the danger came from a Big Brother “watching you” probably from the ‘closed society’ side of the old Iron Curtain. Instead it’s coming from a supposedly open-society Big Brother ensconced in Silicon Valley USA, or rather one of his army of 53,000 employees (!). He’s not just watching you, but zapping you on screen as if a hostile alien in a video game at the first sign of one being deemed off-message (specifically Google’s carefully-filtered click-baiting e-commerce messages, but maybe other more covert “messages” of a mind-control nature).
Is there anything this blogger could or should be doing in the short term that could place his Shroud research, final white flour/wet linen model especially, on Stateside Google, i.e. google.com.? All suggestions, whether by comment or email (sciencebod (at) aol (dot)com will be gratefully received and acknowledged (with privacy to those that request it). But as I say, I must be doing something right, appearing as I do on Page 4 of google.uk.

I said earlier that I had “smoking gun” evidence from my Stonehenge researches that Google was “curating” the lists generated by the 1st stage algorithm, and that “curating” included zapping a listing altogether for reasons one can only guess at.

Well, I now have smoking gun evidence that google.com is doing the same for searches under (shroud of turin). (Reminder: google.com is the listing returned by those doing their search from the United States OR those outside the US who enter http://www.google.com/ncr into their address box. Here’s how I know. Input (shroud of turin) into google.com/ncr and you will not find my site in the first 20 pages of listings (I stopped at 20).
Then input (turin shroud) and you will probably, indeed almost certainly see my site (it was page 3 when I looked a few minutes ago, either on Firefox or Chrome).

No why you may ask should it make such a difference depending on whether one searches under (shroud of turin) or (turin shroud)? It’s hardly likely that an algorithm would distinguish between the two, and even if it did , there should be little difference in ranking (as confirmed by entering into google.co.uk where my site appeared on Page 4 (shroud of turin) and Page 5 (turin shroud).
There is a simple explanation. Someone in the Mountain Ash eyeballed the primary algorithm under (shroud of turin) and zapped my site. But they overlooked to do the same for (turin shroud). You just can’t get the staff these days…

The algorithm says I should be on Page 3 or 4, regardless of whether it’s (shroud of turin) or (turin shroud) that’s entered. But the curating (read censorship) has been done on the first of those only. As I say, prima facie smoking gun evidence that Google is able and willing to override its algorithm, exercising human control, read veto, over what appears on screen to web surfers doing simple entry-level searches, accompanied by qualifying search terms that might presuppose prior acquaintance with the subject.

Glory be: I was just about to notify Google about the search anomaly on google.com (not google.uk) re turin shroud/shroud of turin and thought I’d do one final check. Just as well I did because BOTH are now showing this site on Page 4 of returns.

It would be nice to think the perverseness has gone away for good, and won’t return It would be nice to have complate trust in the Google search engine, that it’s not being manipulated by unseen forces.

I’m withholding judgement right now, and certainly not cracking open the Prosecco. Let’s wait a while and see what happens in the next few days and weeks. Hopefully I should then be seeing more visits to this site on the WordPress stats meter. We shall see.

Thanks to Adrie once again for the useful input. Incidentally I may have a suggestion to make, Adrie, for a joint paper (with a difference) to go to that publishing house you used for your mordanted blood idea.

I’d set out my white flour/wet linen model, and you would do a critical evaluation. All I’d ask is for some indication in advance as to what you see as its chief flaws.

Unusual format I know, but then the object of attention is unusual too…

Colin, I have done absolutely nothing to keep my History Today article near the top of the Google searches. I have been told that its high rating is because people have liked it and passed it around a number of websites. One reason for this is that it sets out clearly what and why I believe about the Shroud. Nowhere on your site do you set up exactly what you believe in one coherent narrative so I am not surprised that you are not picked up in the way I appear to be. I got a positive response from. a Harvard professor who had read the article only today.
I have to say also that my article came in a highly respected history journal and as a result was taken up by the global media. No harm in your setting out your arguments clearly and getting them published in a similarly respected magazine/ journal. Good luck!

This and my sciencebuzz siteconstituted a progress report in real time over some 4 years of a hands-on research project, one that set out to model the TS image in all its subtlety.

I believe I succeeded, at least in principle. It took some 300 or more postings to arrive at the final dry flour/wet linen/oven-roasting model, the essential details of which are in this final posting. I leave it to others to decide whether it’s “coherent” or not. One man’s coherence is another’s blind disregard of the facts.

Unlike Charles Freeman, I am not interested in making an instant big media splash.

Things are quiet right now, lacking as we do Dan Porter’s site. But if a newspaper etc were to run a feature,saying that scientists are still unable to reproduce the TS image characteristics, I would be in there like a shot, were comments to be invited.

In the meantime, I say let sleeping dogs lie. That includes those with flashing neon-lit signposts pointing to their location, provided endlessly by the execrable Google search engine

Not ‘ instant big media splash’ – my article has been near the top of a Google search consistently for eighteen months. I, and presumably other readers, have not a clue why anyone would want to make a flour oven roast of linen and this is presumably why your blog has not been referred to on other sites. If you could set out why clearly with the historical background and get a reputable journal to publish it you might be listened to. It can be done!!

” I, and presumably other readers, have not a clue why anyone would want to make a flour oven roast of linen…”

Then maybe you and those other readers need to read some of the feedback I get, like that from Thibault Heimburger MD earlier on this thread:

“Thank you so much Colin.
This is the kind of pictures we need.
These imprints are truly TS like. In fact your imprints of the hands are the best I ever seen( much more convincing than those of Garlaschelli for example…).”

Thank you Thibault – you are a gentleman and a scholar, a rare combination these days…

We can all try and get as close as we can, with lasers or flour or whatever, to the images as they are now but you still have to argue that the Shroud is chemically the same as it was six hundred or two thousand years ago and explain specifically why anyone would want to make it THEN the way it is NOW. That involves finding an historical narrative that makes sense. I think that some time ago- I am not going to search for it- you told us that you were going to give the historical narrative but you never did. Thr point is that no one would be able to find it the way your site is presented now.
Shroud.com has the top rating, together with the ubiquitous Wikipedia- but it has built up a loyal following among pro-authenticitsover many years -it is a club newsletter. One of my correspondents who was new to the Shroud said that in fact Shroud.com was hopeless as ,while it had lots of pro-authentic articles , you could not find a straightforward coherent defence of the authenticity of the Shroud ( and ,of course, it does not even mention articles ,even those in respected journals, that argue against authenticity so it is hopeless as a means of getting an overall view of the debate). I assume we agree here. I have never seen a single piece of scientific evidence that dates the Shroud before the medieval period despite repeatedly asking for some. Fant’s dating fantasies were embarrassing even for those who believe in the authenticity of the Shroud.
Anyway the question here is how to make your own site more visible. As someone who has a very visible and much read coherent explanation of the Shroud which has kept high in the Google ratings over eighteen months I am simply giving you some tips as how it can be done. You need not take my advice if you don’t want to. I won’t bother you further.

I’m in communication right now with 4 different academics at 4 different universities regarding my ideas on Stonehenge, Seahenge and Silbury Hill. One of them (Prof. Tim Thompson of Teeside University) was promised a dossier by yesterday, responding tto some points he has raised regarding my unifying hypothesis for all three sites. (Yes there are folk out, three of them full professors, who take one seriously without one needing prior media ‘credentials’ beyond one’s blog postings, this site finally becoming visible on Stateside google.com) in the last day or two under (shroud of turin). I hope to get that dossier to him later today, before heading off to the Med for a short break with a low grade Netbook as my only link with the big wide world.

Yup, my priorities are linked with the world of ideas – and I have no time for dogma dressed up as scholarship that is blind to or contemptuous of the existing body of facts and ideas.

So I’m in no hurry to respond to the above – but respond I shall – in my own good time.

“That involves finding an historical narrative that makes sense. I think that some time ago- I am not going to search for it- you told us that you were going to give the historical narrative but you never did. Thr point is that no one would be able”

One would hate to think that someone so important as Charles Freeman was required to check a blogger’s site for recent postings of anything with a historical slant or, heaven forbid, have to resort to search engines.

Well, here’s a tip, Mr. High and Mighty Charles Freeman. Go to the page on shroud.com that serves as portal for your own country’s BSTS Newsletter, No.82. Then go to the end, where it says “Around the Internet”. There you will see this flagging up of my history post from Editor Hugh Farey:

Berry pursues his investigations – now extending into the fourteenth century history of
Geoffroy de Charny and the King of France as well as his practical
experiments – at:

” I, and presumably other readers, have not a clue why anyone would want to make a flour oven roast of linen and this is presumably why your blog has not been referred to on other sites “

The title of this blog contains the words “oven-roasted flour imprint”. That makes it plain, does it not, what is being proposed? Yet here we see here my words being mangled to become: “flour oven roast of linen”.

And you expect to be taken seriously as an academic, do you, Mr.Freeman, when you treat others’ words and ideas with such studied indifference and contempt?

You are not a historian, Mr Freeman. You are a self-promoting anti-science windbag, posturing as an academic. Do you have any published papers in serious peer-reviewed journals? If so, how come I cannot find them online, as mine can be found online by searching under my name and research interests (dietary fibre, resistant starch, microsomal UDP-glucuronyltransferase, photochemistry of bilirubin, phototherapy of neonatal jaundice) ?

Now kindly get off my back. Go bother someone else with your daft ideas and obsessions.

As mentioned earlier, this site is now listed on Page 4 or 5 (usually) of both google.uk and stateside google.com, both for a Past Year search and Anytime. But the dissemination of one’s ideas does not rely entirely on one’s own site. That was clearly the case when shroudstory.com was still going, but those prepared to explore all the Google page 1 listings can find one’s being noted and appreciated elsewhere.

Example: the fourth return for (shroud of turin) is a site called ancient-origins which did a feature on the Shroud of Turin (DNA analysis) in October last year. This blogger contributed a number of comments to that thread, including some with original research (on the so-called ‘lateral distortion’ effect). Those comment earned this appreciative response from the site’s Acting Editor:

lizleafloor wrote on 23 February, 2016 – 15:55

Wow! You really went above and beyond – nice work! It’s great to see results of experimentation. Thanks very much Colin.

(later comment from Liz Leafloor)

The investment in time and effort you’ve made is appreciated. I’ve been following the discussion here with great interest, as we all do at Ancient Origins (we might not always chime in though, unless someone has a direct question) as we want to hear what our readers think. Keep up the great work 🙂

The suggestion here that this blogger operates in a vacuum is ill-informed and totally uncalled for. The problem one has right now is (a) a poverty of research oriented sites (b) the blinkered refusal of wiki to recognize blog postings as valid sources of new data and insights (c) the bias that Google and other search engine show for articles that appear in mass media outlets, regardless of quality, and tending to self-perpetuate once initial clicks have establish them high in a list of returns, then being the first to be seen and clicked long after their topicality and indeed value has passed.(d) the overwhelmingly ‘pro-authenticity’ nature of online sindonology that guarantees off-message sites such as this one will be totally and DELIBERATELY ignored. Do not expect to find generosity of spirit in sindonology.

At some point I intend to do a summary of the major conclusions to emerge from my four years of image research, combined with the insights gained from Dorothy Crispino’s historical research and my own interpretations. But there are more pressing matters to attend to right now, notably the Stonehenge/Silbury Hill project, and a 28 month old project that’s been lying dormant (the tragic death of young Zane Gbangbola in the Feb 2014 as a byproduct of the Chertsey floods – cyanide or carbon monoxide or maybe something else entering the home?).http://colinb-sciencebuzz.blogspot.it/search/label/Zane%20Gbangbola
This blogger has been assisting a Sunday Times reporter with the chemical and toxicological detail; the inquest, expected to last several weeks, finally got under way 3 days ago, which I’m following closely, updating my sciencebuzz posting. So as I say, the Shroud will unfortunately have to wait.

Maybe the earliest artistic representation of the Shroud. Note body image is represented as very faint. Some think it was much bolder, and faded over time right???….
Particularly interesting to see the blood across the lower back represented so explicitly.

Good to hear from you again (assuming you are THE Thomas with whom I had many a useful interaction on the shroudstory site).

Yes, that’s a good discovery on your part – a faint image from the early 16th century, with no suggestion that it’s a standard paint job, but something altogether more subtle and nebulously imprint-like, whether authentic or not.

Might it be a second-hand version of the 1516 Lier copy? They seem to fall within the same time span.

Here’s a comparison of your image from the Christie’s site and the Lier copy (cropped dorsal views only for now).

The “blood” on those early copies is a constant source of puzzlement, an aspect about which I’d prefer to hold fire at present.

Your new discovery would certainly have been worth another posting on the old site, and maybe have attracted 200 or more comments as some did

Like, why is the ‘blood belt’ shown as speckled rather than splodgy? Why are the ‘L-shaped poker holes’ made to look as if blood?

And though I hesitate to say it, like heck I do, why is the blood shown as pigment-like real blood, but not the body image, if the latter had been painted with artists’ pigments as we’re assured was the case? Or did those inferior pigments conveniently fall off in a mere century and a half leaving not so much as the slightest trace for STURP and/or Walter McCrone to sample and analyse? Maybe Freeman’s closet battalions of faded artwork specialists will shortly be summoned out of the sindonological woodwork to provide an explanation… Or there again, that might seem a terrible imposition on his part, one that can be shelved indefinitely while he continues to spin his yarns to any still prepared to listen…

Colin- why you need to resort to abuse against me is not clear.
I only intervened to HELP you find a way of publicising your website so that it was as high on a Google search as my History Today article is. This says nothing about the relevative quality of our work, only about its visibility although I have had a lot of good support as it is easy to contact History Today.
On publications, I prefer to write long books for university presses- so OUP have published three editions of one of my books, and Yale UP two books by me, one on medieval relics which is one of my academic specialties( see the reviews of Holy Bones on the Yale UP US website). As you may know no UP publishes a book unless the proposal has gone through its academic committee and then the final version is checked by two anonymous reviewers.
I see no reason to go on spinning any MORE yarns as I am quite happy with the high ranking of my own HT article. Why should I need to do more? I accumulate positive feedback and would prefer to present it together at book length if the opportunity presents itself. Meanwhile I write articles on the Shroud when asked to do so as in a twin page spread in the Church Times last June and a long article on the Catholic Church’s attitude to the Shroud in the autumn 2016 edition of the Journal of Information Ethics.
Why not get on with your work and seeking specialist support and publication rather than worrying about my status as a historian, a status that seems to have been accepted by everyone who has paid me as a historian for the past forty- three years.
I just don’t get where you are coming from!

Where am I coming from? Answer: the EVIDENCE, as was Dorothy Crispino. One scrutinizes the evidence first as dispassionately as possible – thinking aloud so to speak – so even if others disagree with one’s final conclusions, at least they know where one was coming from initially (the EVIDENCE, as distinct from preconceptions).

Let’s briefly recap on how we arrived where we are, and where we intend to go next. First, this was no 8000 word splurge, submitted to a single issue of a magazine available at one’s newsagent, guaranteeing lots of Google hits but not much else.

This began as a project at the tail end of 2011 with a clear objective – to reproduce the Shroud image in all its subtlety (negative character, superficiality, bleachability etc etc) making due allowance for what probably were minor ageing changes (but not, repeat NOT the major deterioration proposed in that aforementioned magazine article that is frankly a copout, to say nothing of an insult to the intelligence).

That was an ambitious objective, and at the outset meant ruling out any prospect of pulling a white rabbit quickly from the hat. It was for that reason that a second objective was chosen: to report the progress (or otherwise) week by week in real time until such a time that one could say – “Well. that’s as far as I intend to go. Judge for yourselves dear reader whether the goal has been achieved.” If I’m not mistaken that second aspect made the project a one-off: I’m not aware of any other attempt to use the internet to report a research project informally in real time, warts ‘n’ all .But such is this blogger’s confidence in the scientific method – of setting up hypotheses and testing them to destruction if need be – that it seemed a realistic and worthwhile exercise.

Self-indulgent maybe, given all the twists and turns? Maybe, in which case the time has come to wind things up, but in a manner that is true to those twin objectives of reproducing an image, explaining how one got there, especially what had to be rejected as well as selected along the way.

Here’s what I propose to do next. I shall write a summary of each quarter’s research, starting with Jan/Feb//Mar of 2012, then April/May/June etc up to April/May/June this year (2016). That’s 18 quarters in all, 18 weekly reports, taking us through to autumn this year. Each of those quarterly reports will be a maximum of 1000 words. Anything else I want to say in excess of 1000 words will go into the Comments (where naturally feedback is welcome if judged reasonably civil AND constructive in keeping with the open-minded modus operandi of this exercise – I am synthesising a view not proselytizing which means there’s no place for gratuitous insults or browbeating tirades).

Finally when that backward look at 4 years of research has been summarized, I will write a grand (or maybe not so grand) summary, again keeping it short (probably 2500 words max), inviting more comments, and then leave it at that. Title: possibly “Modelling the Shroud of Turin, 2016. Are we nearly there yet?”(Nope: change of mind. Too much hard work over too long a time, and who’s going to want to read twenty or so 1,000 words summaries?
A single post summary of the 4 year project should suffice).
Why call a halt now? Because further progress is scarcely possible without new detailed chemical information on the TS image against which to compare the model systems. I have previously suggested what could usefully be done, e.g. bleaching image v non-image areas with tritium-labelled diimide (NT=NT), i.e. diimide, NH=NH, after partial tritiation, recovering and concentrating radiolabelled material with suitable extraction procedures, identfying the products and/or molecular fragments on glc-mass spec and deducing the nature of the chromophore (dehydrated carbohydrate? modified lignin? Maillard reaction product? )

No, I will not be making any proactive advances to mass media outlets, but they are welcome to approach me, on the understanding that they produce the write-up – given I confine myself to informal blogs, not articles or books – and am allowed to see any copy before it appears in print, and given an opportunity to make suggestions or corrections).

Speaking of history (and historians) I can’t resist a bit of name-dropping, having just opened a Fathers’ Day present.

It’s a copy of Ben Wilson’s “Heyday: Britain and the Birth of the Modern World”.

Word must have got back to Ben (who is no stranger to this blogger) that I had read his latest book, and considered it quite the best piece of historical writing I have seen in my entire life. So when I open the book, a present from a close family member rather better acquainted with Ben, it’s to find inscribed, on the title page: “To Colin. June 2016. Happy reading! With very best wishes. Ben Wilson”.

I shall now re-read it, and probably re-re-read it, such is its vast sweep and global perspective on an amazing decade in British and world history (approx 1850-1860). Ben is one near-flawless wordsmith, expressive, capturing the derring-do mood of the times, while hugely self-disciplined with his measured exposition too.

Second thoughts: I’ve scrubbed the idea of doing retrospective quarterly reports – some 20 in all, and struck through that passage in the last comment but one, giving (fairly obvious) reasons.

Instead I shall do four annual summaries, entitled (provisionally):

“Ups and Downs of a 4 Year project to model the enigmatic negative 3D-enhancible image of Turin Shoud”. (Suggestions for a shorter snappier title invited).

i.e. “Ups and Downs of a 4 Year project to model the enigmatic negative 3D-enhancible image of Turin Shoud”: (2012)
“Ups and Downs of a 4 Year project to model the enigmatic negative 3D-enhancible image of Turin Shoud”: (2013)
“Ups and Downs of a 4 Year project to model the enigmatic negative 3D-enhancible image of Turin Shoud”: (2014)
“Ups and Downs of a 4 Year project to model the enigmatic negative 3D-enhancible image of Turin Shoud”: (2015)

It should be fun to write. Why? Because (1) it will be a series of sentences preceded by “UP” or “DOWN” (with far fewer ups than downs – that being the nature of the scientific method) and (2) because I shall take a leaf from James Watson’s “Double Helix” and be, er, refreshingly candid about the reception – good or bad – given to my numerous postings, some 300+, deserved or undeserved. I shall name names, or in most instances anonymous internet pseudonyms, and divulge previously private thoughts, not all of them charitable…

As I say, it should be FUN TO WRITE, the colloquial expression being “demob happy”. 😉 One has to hope, needless to say, that Dan Porter will stick by his assurance that the lapsed ‘shroudstory’ site he hosted remains available as an archive, since that was the effective portal and discussion forum for most of my findings (appearing within hours, sometimes minutes even, of posting here or on sciencebuzz).

Afterthought: each annual summary will be constructed in a series of small ongoing instalments, with the most recent entry being added at the top, i.e. reverse chronological order, true to the original blog (“webLOG”) concept. That allows me to do a little now and again, as and when there’s time available (Stonehenge is presently on the back burner while I remonstrate with Google for leaving my postings off simple searches under “stonehenge” which as the wag once said: “If you’re not on Google you might as well not exist”. At least I was able to get Google to see sense on its Stateside google.com, which now finally lists this site on P4 or 5 of a search under (shroud of turin).

Update, 24th June 2016, early am: this blogger’s promised ‘retrospective’ on the Shroud, going back to December 2011, is in an advanced state of preparation. Expect the first instalment by this evening yes, red letter day, Friday 24th June, which is looking as if it might at last be UK Independence Day – and not before time!). It takes the form of a severe critique of the ENEA laser press release – and indeed that Italian state-funded institute’s entire approach to the TS which this blogger considered then, as indeed he still does, to have constituted a gross affront to science on the part of a team wrongly describing themselves as “scientists”. Nope, they were laser technologists pretending to be scientists, doctorates notwithstanding, while in fact trashing the scientific method with gay abandon hoping to promote an entirely theological narrative…